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SARAH VEECH GARVIN 

Sketched from a pxjrtrait in the home of her granddaughter, 
Mary Jane Bell, on Fourth street. Sarah Veech Garvin was 
the daughter of John and Agnes Weir Veech and the wife 
of William Garvin. 



JLouisville's iT^irst tamil 



les 



A SERIES OF GENEALOGICAL SKETCHES 

BY 

KATHLEEN JENNINGS 



WITH DRAWINGS BY EUGENIA JOHNSON 




THE Standard printing Co. 

PUBLISHERS LOUISVILLE, KY. 



/ V 



^iJuO 



■ LSJ'6 



COPYRIGHT 1 SaO EY 

THE STANDARD PRINTING COMPANY 

INCORPORATED 

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 

PUBLISHED MAY 1 920 



m 26 1^20 



©CU571463 



Foreword 

Typical of the gentlefolk who came to the 
Kentucky frontier in the last thirty years of the 
Eighteenth century are the twelve families grouped 
in this series, known as Louisville's First Families. 
An effort has been made to picture the early social 
life of Louisville as inaugurated by the twelve 
families included and by similar families of culture 
and refinement that emigrated from Virginia, Mary- 
land and Pennsylvania to the wilderness in the 
late seventeen hundreds. 

From family records and traditions that have 
come down, verbally, through the several genera- 
tions, material was obtained with which to illustrate 
the permanency of these families in the city, listing 
the descendants of the pioneers, to link the 
Eighteenth century with the Twentieth, and to in- 
dicate the shaping influence of such people upon 
the growth of a community. 



Contents 

Foreword 7 

I n troduction 1 3 

I The Bullitt family (part !)..._ „....„ 19 

1 1 The Bullitt family (part II) 27 

III ThePrather family 35 

IV The Clark family 45 ^ 

V The Churchill family 59 

VI The Pope family 69 

VII The Speed family 8 1 

VIII The Joyes family 91 

IX The Veech family _ 101 ^ 

X The, Thrus ton family _ 1 13 

XI The Taylor family 125 

XII The Bate family „ 141 

XI H The Floyd family (part I) , 153 

XIV The Floyd family (part II) 167 - 



lllusfrations 

Portrait of Sarah Veech Garvin. [Frontispiece.] 

Oxmoor, the house built by Alexander Scott Bullitt. 

The Jouett portrait of Cuthbert Bullitt. . 

The Jouett portrait of Thomas Prather. 

Locust Grove, the home of Lucy Clark Croughan. 

Spring Hill, the home of Samuel Churchill, ^ 

Portrait of Martha Pope Humphrey. <■ 

Farmington, the Speed homestead. ^ 

Portrait of Thomas Joyes. v 

Portrait of Richard Snowden Veech. 

Portrait of Buckner Thruston. 

Portrait of Zachary Taylor. 

Portraits of Edmund Berry Taylor and his wife, 
Susannah Gibson Taylor. 

Berry Hill, the house built by James Smalley Bate. 

Portrait of John Floyd. 

Portrait of Capt. Thomas Floyd Smith, u-^ 



Introduction 

EJISVILLE society was as delightful in 
1819 as in these 1919 care-free days 
of after the war, if one may rely upon 
the accuracy of Dr. Henrico McMurtrie, who pub- 
lished his * 'Sketches of Louisville** just a hun- 
dred years ago. Surely his graceful tribute to 
society will bear repetition, for while Louisville, 
the town of 4,500 at the Falls of the Ohio, has 
lost its slender proportions, has changed in many 
ways, even in climate, the social life has with- 
stood time to the extent of proving quite as rare 
and interesting and has managed to hold within 
the circle families of the same name as those that 
dispensed hospitality in memorable fashion in 
his day. 

Dr. McMurtrie observed that the majority of 
the inhabitants, engaged in adding dollar to dol- 
lar, devoted no time to literature or "to the ac- 
quirement of those graceful nothings, which, of 
no value in themselves, still constitute one great 
charm of polished society. Such is the charac- 
ter of the inhabitants of this place, in general, 
"ma ogni medaglio ha il suo reverso.** TTiere is 
a circle, small *tis true, but within whose magic 
round abounds every pleasure that wealth, regu- 
lated by taste, can produce, or urbanity bestow. 



Louisville's First Families 

There, the "red heel" of Versailles may imagine 
himself in the emporium of fashion, and, whilst 
leading beauty through the mazes of the dance, 
forget that he is in the wilds of America/* 

Since that time many families have come to 
Louisville to take up their residence; aristocratic 
families of Virginia, families representing the 
flower of the far South, families of culture and 
refinement from across the Mason and Dixon line, 
those who came over in the Mayflower, and 
others on the "W. C. Hite," as one society leader 
cleverly described the arrival of her antecedents 
in our midst. These good people have made 
their place in the community, are indispensable 
to the city's business, social, and club life, but 
in connecting what in Dr. McMurtrie's day made 
society a rare and beautiful phase of life in a 
bustling frontier town, with the Louisville society 
after a hundred years have past, attention must 
be devoted and confined to the first families from 
an historian's viewpoint, but first families in the 
other sense, too, for they represent today what 
they then stood for in position, culture and refine- 
ment. 

They formed the nucleus of society in 1819, 
but they came to the beautiful country of the 
Beargrass before 1800. 

The population of the town in 1 780 was in- 
correctly rated by an early historian as thirty 



14 



Introduction 

inhabitants, though the figure was nearer one 
hundred and fifty, so it should not be difficult to 
separate the sheep from the goats, although it 
would appear that there were only sheep among 
the early settlers, leaving the other class to be 
composed of marauding Indians, who bitterly 
contested possession of every clearing the original 
group of cotillon leaders and future bank presi- 
dents made. Kentucky, at that time the Fin- 
castle county of Virginia, was known as the land 
of blood, but was desired by Virginia gentlemen 
for immigration purposes, no less heartily than 
by the Indians of the North and South who had 
marked it for their own as a hunting ground. 
The Indians bit the dust in many of these en- 
counters, but heavy toll was taken among the 
pioneers, whose families counted possession of 
Kentucky homes all the more dear in their tragic 
association. 



15 




"OXMOOR" 

Built in 1787 by Alexander Scott Bullitt. 

A view of the frame portion of the present Oxmoor house 
occupied by William Marshall Bullitt. The dwelling, 
sketched above from an illustration in Colonel Thomas W. 
Bullitt's "My Life at Oxmoor", included four rooms and a 
central hall, in which there was a stairway of walnut, prettily 
carved, leading to two attic rooms above. 

The brick front was built by William C. Bullitt, early in 
the last century. 



The Bullitt Family. I. 

CAPT. Thomas Bullitt, a distinguished sol- 
dier in the French and Indian wars, 
headed a surveying party which jour- 
neyed from Virginia to the falls of the Ohio 
in July, 1773, and in August of that year 
laid out a town. Twelve years later, his 
nephew, Alexander Scott Bullitt, after a brief 
residence in Shelby county, on Bull Skin creek, 
moved down to the settlement at Falls of Ohio. 
On a farm of a thousand acres on Beargrass 
creek, nine miles from Louisville, he built his first 
home, a log cabin. He named the farm Oxmoor, 
from the celebrated Oxmoor, of Tristam Shandy, 
and on this farm lives his lineal descendant, 
William Marshall Bullitt, and his family, the 
property having been in possession of the Bullitts 
from that day when Alexander Scott Bullitt and 
his bride, Priscilla Christian, came to make the 
Kentucky home of this branch of the Bullitt 
family that has figured prominently in the social 
and professional life of Louisville ever since. 

Alexander Scott Bullitt, the son of Judge 
Cuthbert Bullitt, of the General Court of Virginia, 
preferred coming to Kentucky to fight Indians 



19 



Loui sv i I le* s First Families 

to staying at home and studying law. His fifteen- 
year-old bride, Priscilla, was the daughter of 
Col. William Christian and his wife, Annie Henry, 
a sister of Patrick Henry. Col. Christian, by a 
patent of 1 780, was granted 2,000 acres of the 
Beargrass land which had been surveyed in 1 774, 
and on it, in 1 780, there was a considerable 
fort, Sturgis Station, occupied by from twenty 
to forty families. Thither Col. Christian, of 
Virginia, sent his slaves ahead to prepare a 
dwelling, and he with his family arrived to settle 
in August, 1 785. Col. Christian was killed by 
Indians in I 786. Two years after building the 
log cabin above the spring of Oxmoor, the Bul- 
litts erected a frame house where their children, 
Cuthbert, Helen Scott, Anne and William C. 
Bullitt, were born. 

AJexander Scott Bullitt, after the death of 
hrs wife, Priscilla, married a widow, Mrs. Mary 
Churchill Prather, a sister of Col. Samuel 
Churchill, Armistead and Henry Churchill, 
prominent Louisville men of affairs. The Bul- 
litts and the Churchills were intimate friends. 
Alexander Scott Bullitt was one of the eleven 
State Senators in the first Kentucky Legislature, 
June 4, 1 792. He was elected Speaker of the 
Senate and re-elected for twelve years. He was 
the first Lieutenant Governor of Kentucky in 
May, 1800. Bullitt county was named for him. 



20 



Bullitt 

In September, 1819, William C. Bullitt 
married Mildred Ann Fry, a daughter of Col. 
Joshua Fry and his wife, Peachy Walker, of 
Albemarle county, Va., who emigrated to Ken- 
tucky, and have other descendants in Louisville 
in the Speeds. Col. Fry was commander of a 
regiment in the French and Indian war, 1754, 
in which George Washington served as lieutenant 
colonel. 

William C. Bullitt built the brick front of 
the Oxmoor residence, completing the structure 
as it now stands. Here ten children were born 
to William C. Bullitt and his wife, and three of 
these have descendants in Louisville; Sue Bullitt, 
who married the Hon. Archibald Dixon, of Hen- 
derson, the mother of William B. Dixon; Helen 
Bullitt, who married Henry Chenoweth, the 
mother of Mrs. John Stites, Miss Fanny Cheno- 
weth, Mrs. Hugh Barret, Mr. Henry Chenoweth 
and Dr. James Chenoweth; and Col. Thomas 
Walker Bullitt, long prominent in Louisville as 
a lawyer and citizen, who married Priscilla 
Logan. Col. Bullitt was the father of William 
Marshall Bullitt, Alexander Scott Bullitt and 
Keith Bullitt. His other children do not make 
their hom.e in Louisville. 

The youngest member of the family is Master 
Benjamin Logan Bullitt, the infant son of Mr. 



21 



Louisville's First Families 

and Mrs. Keith Bullitt, who leave shortly to take 
up their residence in Seattle. 

Cuthbert Bullitt, the brother of Willian C. 
Bullitt, married Harriett Willett and had a son, 
Dr. Henry M. Bullitt, the first dean of the Ken- 
tucky School of Medicine and the city's first 
health officer. 

Dr. Bullitt married Julia Anderson. They 
had one daughter, Virginia Bullitt, who married 
John Cood, the mother of Helen Good, who 
married Owen Tyler. 

Dr. Bullitt married a second time, Mrs Sallie 
Paradise, and had four daughters, Elizabeth 
Bullitt, who married Charles N. Buck, former 
Minister to Paris; Mrs. Julia Bullitt Rauterburg; 
Mrs. Edith Bullitt Jacob, wife of Mayor Charles 
D. Jacob, and Miss Henrietta Bullitt. Priscilla 
Bullitt, a daughter of Cuthbert Bullitt, married 
A. A. Gordon, and their daughter, Harriet, 
married Logan C. Murray. 

The eldest child of Alexander Scott Bullitt, 
Anne Christian Bullitt, was married on February 
4, 1819, to John Howard, of Maryland, a lineal 
descendant of two acting governors of that prov- 
ince, namely. Commander Robert Brooke and 
Colonel Thomas Brooke. She is ancestress of 
the Courtenays. Her daughter, Annie Christian 
Howard married October 13, 1842, Robert 
Graham Courtenay, of Crown Hall, Ireland, who 



22 



Bullitt 

located in Louisville in 1882, subsequently be- 
coming a prominent man of affairs, firm mem- 
ber of Thomas Anderson and Company, director 
in the Bank of Louisville, director of Louisville 
and Frankfort and Lexington and Frankfort 
Railroads, administrator of the John L. Martin 
estate, and president and engineer of the Lou- 
isville Gas Company. Five of their children 
figured in Louisville affairs. 

The eldest daughter, Julia Christian Courtenay 
married Hector V. Loving, and has in Louisville 
the following children: Mrs. Julia Loving 
George, mother of Julia Courtenay and Robert 
George; Laura Loving, the wife of D. C. Harris, 
and Emma Loving. 

Two other daughters, Emma and Helen Martin 
Courtenay, make their home on Fourth street. 

A son, Thomas Anderson Courtenay, married 
Jane Short Butler, and has the following chil- 
dren residing here: Thomas Anderson Courte- 
nay, Jr., William Howard Courtenay, II., and 
Jane Short Courtenay, wife of Henry S. Tyler. 
Another son is William Howard Courtenay, 
chief engineer of the L. & N. Railroad, whose wife 
is Isabel Stevenson Clark. They have two sons, 
Erskine Howard Courtenay and James Clark 
Courtenay. 



23 




CUTHBERT BULLITT 

A sketch from the Jouett portrait owned by Hugh Bullitt, 
the son of Mr. and Mrs. C. Malcolm Bullitt, and a great- 
grandson of this pioneer. 



The Bullitt Family. 11. 

OVERSHADOWED by warehouses and 
oflice buildings, Bullitt street seems a 
queer memorial to those Virginia gentle- 
men, Cuthbert and Thomas Bullitt, who played 
important roles in building up a city at the falls 
of the Ohio, and who have left behind them, 
besides testimony of their useful careers, a great 
number of descendants who are prominent today. 
One wonders sometimes how it happens that this 
is not Bullittville. On what is now Bullitt street, 
back in those early days, there stood two hos- 
pitable houses, the grounds extending from 
Fourth to Sixth streets and with a view across 
the river which is now enjoyed by many business 
men from office windows high above the levee, 
then a part of the Bullitt's front lawn, for there 
were the homes of Mr. and Mrs. Cuthbert Bul- 
litt, and of Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Bullitt. 

The Cuthbert Bullitts had a farm about a mile 
and a half south of their town house, the coun- 
try home being in what is now Central Park, sur- 
rounded by fields and woodland extending from 
Sixth to Second street. This farm, a part of 
the Bullitts* large holdings of real estate, was 
inherited by Amanthis Bullitt, who married 



27 



Louisville's First Families 

George Weissinger. The land was not desir- 
able then as later when the city's growth made 
it necessary to drain the land, obliterating the 
ponds and enhancing the value of property be- 
yond the dreams of the Weissingers, who had 
disposed of the farm. 

In a chapter devoted to these ponds which 
intersected the area on which the city is built 
and which, breeding disease, gave Louisville 
the name, "Graveyard of the Ohio," Casse- 
day wrote in his history of 1852, "A map 
of the city as it was sixty or even thirty 
years ago would present somewhat the appear- 
ance of an archipelago, a sea full of little islands. 
The Long Pond commenced at Sixth and Mar- 
ket and extended southwest to Sixteenth street. 
Gwathmey's, or Grayson's Pond, was on Center 
street just in the rear of the First Presbyterian 
church, which stood on Green between Sixth and 
Center and extended westwardly halfway to 
Seventh street. Besides these two principal lakes 
there were innumerable others, some containing 
water only after heavy rains and others standing 
full at all times. Market street from the corner 
of Third down was the site of one, Third be- 
tween Jefferson and Green, Jefferson near the 
corner of Fourth and so on, ad infinitum." 

Major William Bullitt was a half-brother of 
Capt. Thomas Bullitt, who surveyed the town in 



28 



Bullitt 

Ml 3, and of Judge Cuthbert Bullitt, the father 
of Alexander Scott Bullitt, another distinguished 
early settler. Major William Bullitt and his 
wife, Mary Burbridge, daughter of General Bur- 
bridge, of Warfield, Va., were the parents of 
Cuthbert and Thomas Bullitt, who came here in 
1804, and are described in Collins* History as 
*'two of the first merchants of Louisville dis- 
tinguished for their probity and business qualifi- 
cations, who amassed large estates for their 
descendants." 

Cuthbert Bullitt married Anne Neville, of 
Virginia, daughter of General Joseph Neville, of 
Revolutionary fame. They journeyed to Louis- 
ville to build their home here on the river front. 
Thomas Bullitt married Diana Gwathmey, of the 
prominent pioneer family, and their son, Alex- 
ander Bullitt, owned the handsome home on Jef- 
ferson street, now the Holcomb mission. Alex- 
ander Bullitt married twice, his first wife being a 
beautiful heiress, Fannie Smith, for whom two 
steamboats were named, one the "Fannie Smith," 
the other, the "Fannie Bullitt." His second wife, 
also fair and rich, was Irene W illiarns. After this 
marriage he moved to New Orleans, where he 
bought the New Orleans Picayune, one of the 
biggest newspapers of the South. 

Cuthbert Bullitt and his wife, Anne, were the 
parents of eight children, four of whom have 



29 



Louisville's First Families 

families socially prominent in the city: Neville 
Bullitt, who married Ann Amelia Steele, the 
father of Neville Bullitt; William Bullitt, who mar- 
ried Virginia Anderson, the father of the late 
Alexander Bullitt, and of Malcolm and Howard 
Bullitt (Alexander and Malcolm Bullitt married 
two sisters, Clara and Heloise Kennedy) ; Aman- 
this Bullitt, who married George Wessinger, the 
mother of George Weissinger, who married 
Amelia Neville Pearce; of Blanche Weissinger, 
who married Capt. Thomas Floyd Smith; of 
Harry Weissinger, who married Isabelle Muir, 
and of Caroline Bullitt, who married Dr. 
Thomas Wilson, the rnother of eight daughters. 
Neville Bullitt and his wife, Ann Amelia Steele, 
built a country home, "Riverside," in 1830, just 
above the present site of the Louisville Country 
Club, where Mr. John H. Caperton has a hand- 
some home now. "Riverside" was the scene of 
many gatherings of the Bullitts and their friends. 
There were eight children to grow up at "River- 
side:" Neville Bullitt, Jr., who married Mattie 
D. Bohannon, the father of Capt. Neville Bullitt, 
Thomas Bullitt, of Anne Amelia Bullitt (Mrs. 
A. B. Pinney), and the Bullitt twins, Emily and 
Juliet, the latter, Mrs. James B. Ayers of 
Virginia; and William Wurts Bullitt, who mar- 
ried Medora Gilmore, the father of Medora, 



30 



Bullitt 

Joseph Neville, and Kirwan Bullitt, are the only- 
two who have families in Louisville. 

Dr. and Mrs. Thomas Wilson had a daughter, 
Lucinda, who married Gavin Cochran. Mrs. 
Cochran died a short time ago, her children 
being: Mrs. Byron Baldwin, John Cochran, Mrs. 
Edmund F. Trabue and Wilson Cochran. 

Almira Wilson married Lytleton Cooke, their 
daughter, Alice, married David Kellar; Caroline 
Wilson married Edward Fulton, their children 
being Mrs. John Tevis and Dr. Gavin Fulton; 
Amelia Wilson, who married Fred Anderson; 
Annie Wilson and Henrietta Wilson. 

The children of Capt. and Mrs. Thomas Floyd 
Smith are: Mayor George Weissinger Smith, 
who married Nell Hunt, a descendant of the 
Prathers, another pioneer family; Mrs. Amanthis 
Jungbluth, Thomas Floyd Smith, who m.arried 
Mary Bruce, and Nan Pope Smith, who married 
Frank Carpenter. 

Harry Weissinger and his wife, Isabelle Muir, 
are the parents of Margaret, who married Samuel 
T. Castleman, and is the mother of Harry and 
Isabelle Castleman; and of Judge Muir Weis- 
singer. Their other children do not live in Lou- 
isville. 

George Weissinger, who married Amelia Nev- 
ille Pearce, was the father of Amelia Weissinger, 
who married Hoadley Cochran. His home at 



31 



Louisville's First Families 

Pewee Valley was the setting for "The Little 
Colonel," by Mrs. Annie Fellows Johnston, the 
Little Colonel being his granddaughter, Hattie 
Cochran, who is now Mrs. Albert M. Dick, Jr. 

Benjamin Bullitt, another son of Major and 
Mrs. William Bullitt, nnarried Mary Ferguson, in 
1808. Their daughter, Mary Bullitt, married 
Major Richard Zantziger. One of their three 
daughters, Octavia Zantziger, married Clarence 
Bate, having a son, John Throckmorton Bate. 



32 




TOHWSOK 



THOMAS PRATHER 

This sketch is made from Jouett's likeness of this estimable 
gentleman, who is said to have done more for the advance- 
ment of Louisville than any other one man. The Jouett 
portrait of Thomas Prather is owned by his great-great- 
granddaughter, Mrs. J. Barbour Minnigerode. 



The Prather Family. 

A PUBLIC - SPIRITED citizen identified 
with the growth of Louisville no less 
than with the social life of his day was 
Thomas Prather, born in Maryland in 1770, of 
English extraction. He crossed the Wilderness 
Trail to seek his fortune in the new coun- 
try and was one of the city's first mer- 
chants, having opened a store here as early 
as 1 794. Success marked his every venture 
and riches poured in upon him. He was the 
capitalist of his day, and famed for his philan- 
thropies. Broadway, for many years Prather 
street, was named for him. Prather was presi- 
dent of the first bank in Louisville, the old Bank 
of Kentucky, which he opened on January 1, 
1812, and which did business on Main street 
near Fifth. When the bank suspended specie 
payments he resigned his office with the remark: 
**I can preside over no institution which declines 
to meet its engagements promptly and to the 
letter." 

His generosity in contributing to charitable 
and civic endeavors won for him the title of 
*'Oh, put me down for the balance," Prather. 
He gave five acres and Cuthbert Bullitt gave 



35 



Louisville's First Families 

three to the city for a hospital site in 1 8 1 7. In- 
terested in the general welfare, Prather and Bul- 
litt served on many committees together. With 
Peter F. Ormsby they were appointed by the 
Board of Trustees, in 1820, to purchase suitable 
fire engines (two or three), for the use of the 
city. 

The property for the hospital site was given 
with the proviso that it should revert to the 
Prather and Bullitt heirs if used for any other 
purpose. When the new million dollar City 
Hospital was planned a change of site was con- 
sidered until the deeds were looked up and dis- 
closed this restriction. One of the numerous 
Prather heirs recounting the incident said "It 
looked for a time as if I might have fifty dollars 
for a new frock." 

Thomas Prather was married in 1800 to 
Matilda Fontaine, a daughter of Capt. Aaron 
Fontaine, one of the pretty Miss Fontaines, as 
they were called, though they were also known 
as the alphabet Fontaines there were so many of 
them. Matilda and her eight sisters were all 
famous for their beauty and intellectuality, and 
all married distinguished men. From Matilda 
Fontaine is supposed to come the fresh blonde 
prettiness of the Prather women. 

The Prather residence stood in Prather square, 
the block bounded by Third and Fourth, Walnut 



36 



P r ather 

and Green, Walnut street taking its name from 
the fine row of walnut trees on the south side 
of the house. This house was built by Judge 
Fortunatus Cosby, who married Mrs. Prather s 
sister, Mary Ann Fontaine. 

It was on the way home from Philadelphia 
where he had been on business that Prather met 
a young man, John J. Jacob, of Hampshire 
county, Virginia, starting out to seek his fortune. 
He urged Jacob to come to Louisville, and after- 
ward took the young gentleman into partnership, 
forming the firm of Prather & Jacob. John J. 
Jacob married Ann Overton Fontaine and built a 
home across Walnut street from his brother-in- 
law Prather's home, where the Pendennis Club is 
today. 

Thomas and Matilda Prather had six children, 
two sons and four daughters. James Smiley 
Prather married Louisa Martin and their chil- 
dren were: Mary (Mrs. George Robinson Hunt) 
and Blanche (Mrs. Edward Mitchell). Mrs. 
Hunt, who died not long ago, has two daughters 
in Louisville — Ellen Pope Hunt, the wife of 
George Weissinger Smith, and Kate Hunt, who 
married Samuel Hutchings. 

The other son, William Prather, married his 
first cousin, Penelope Pope, the daughter of 
Alexander Pope, whose wife was Martha Fon- 
taine. This marriage establishes a wide connec- 



37 



Louisville' s First Families 

tion of families socially prominent. William and 
Penelope Prather had seven daughters: Kate, 
who married Orville Winston; Sue, who is Mrs. 
John Zanone; Matilda, who married Goldsbor- 
ough Robinson; Julia and Martha, who died 
young, and the twins, Penelope and Margaret, 
the latter, Mrs. John Luce, and her sister, better 
known as Miss Eppie Prather, the only descen- 
dant with the surname, Prather. Mrs. William 
B. Hardy and Humphrey Robinson are the chil- 
dren of Goldsborough and Matilda Robinson, 
who live here. Mrs. Alex P. Witty and Prather 
Zanone are the daughter and son of Mrs. Za- 
none. The daughters of Kate and Orville Wins- 
ton were Penelope (Mrs. Ernest AUis), the 
mother of Mrs. William B. Harrison, and Kate 
(Mrs. Frederick Hussey), the mother of Mrs. 
Barbour Minnigerode, Mrs. Arthur H. Mid- 
dleton, Mrs. Thomas Jefferson, of Springfield, 
Mass., and Mabel Hussey, of Paris. 

Thomas and Matilda Prather* s daughters all 
married prominent Kentuckians. Mary Jane 
Prather married Worden P. Churchill, and 
after his death married Dr. Charles M. Way. 
Her sons were Worden P. Churchill and W. H. 
Way. 

Matilda Prather married Samuel Smith 
Nicholas, the distinguished lawyer and jurist. 
Their handsome home was on Fifth street be- 



38 



Prather 

tween Chestnut and Walnut. Their daughter, 
Julia, Mrs. James C. Johnston, lives with her 
daughter. Miss Mary Johnston, at Fourth and 
Broadway. Their sons, George and Samuel 
Smith Nicholas, have a number of descendants 
here. George Nicholas married Emma Hawes 
and had a daughter, Tina Nicholas, who mar- 
ried John Churchill. The son of Mr. and Mrs. 
John Churchill is John Churchill, who married 
Lucy Jones. 

By a second marriage to Mary Anna Pope, 
George Nicholas had ten children. One son, 
George Nicholas, who married Evelyn Thomp* 
son, lives in Crescent Hill, and another son. 
Pope Nicholas, lives in Shelbyville, but is in 
business in Louisville. 

Samuel Smith Nicholas, Jr., who married 
Nannie Carter, daughter of Capt. Frank Carter, 
has two daughters in Louisville this winter, 
Emma Nicholas and Mrs. Harry Lee Williams, 
although the latter's home is in Chicago. 

Maria Julia Prather married Henry Clay, Jr., 
the son of the Great Commoner, and her 
daughter, Nannie Clay, now Mrs. Henry Mc- 
Dowell, inherited Ashland, near Lexington, the 
home of Henry Clay. 

Catherine Cornelia Prather married the Pres- 
byterian minister, the Rev. Edward P. Humphrey, 
their son being the late E. W. C. Humphrey, 



39 



Louisville's First Families 

father of Edward P. Humphrey, Lewis C. 
Humphrey and Dr. Heman Humphrey. Dr. 
Humphrey, who was a native of Connecticut and 
the son of a distinguished minister, the president 
of Amherst College, had as his charge a church 
in Jeffersonville at the time of his marriage to 
Miss Prather. Later he was minister of the old 
Second Presbyterian church, and this church 
granted him a leave of absence of eight months 
to go abroad after his wife's death. In 1847 
he was married to Martha Pope, a daughter of 
Alexander Pope and Martha Fontaine, who was 
the widow of her cousin, Charles Pope. Dr. 
Humphrey and his wife, Martha Pope, had one 
son, Judge Alexander Pope Humphrey. 

Capt. Basil Prather, born in 1 740 in Maryland, 
was an elder half-brother of Thomas Prather. 
He fought through the Revolutionary war, de- 
clining any pay for his services, and later came 
to Louisville. He has been described as exceed- 
ingly handsome, six feet three inches tall and of 
cordial and engaging manners. He is numbered 
among the commissioners of Louisville in 1 790, 
and owned farm land near Louisville and in 
other parts of the State, bequeathed to his heirs 
on which they settled. 

At a ball given in the fort built on the site of 
Jeffersonville he met Fanny Meriwether, of the 



40 



th 



r a t n e r 



pioneer family, and shortly afterward they were 
married. His bride was years younger than him- 
self. They settled on a farm in the Bluegrass 
district, living in opulence. Their daughter, 
Martha Meriwether Prather, married Dr. War- 
wick Miller, a son of Judge Isaac Miller, of 
Pennsylvania, who was an early settler. 

Capt. Prather died in 1 803. 

Richard Prather, another member of the 
Maryland family to settle here, was one of the 
"City fathers," being elected a trustee of the town 
of Louisville in 1797. His wife was Mary 
Churchill, a daughter of Armistead and Eliza- 
beth Bakewell Churchill, of Virginia, who were 
among the prominent pioneers of 1 787. Eliza 
Prather, the daughter of Richard and Mary 
Prather, became the wife of James Guthrie, that 
distinguished citizen, the founder of the L. & N. 
James and Eliza Guthrie had two daughters, Ann 
Augusta and Mary Guthrie, both of whom mar- 
ried and have descendants here. 

Ann Augusta Guthrie married Dr. William 
Caldwell, and was the mother of James Guthrie 
Caldwell, who married Nannie Standiford; of 
Junius Caldwell, who married Ella Payne, of 
Georgetown; and of Ann Eliza Caldwell, who 
married Ernest Norton, and was the mother of 
Caldwell Norton. 



41 



Louisville's First Families 

Mary Guthrie married Richard Coke, of Logan 
county, and has a grandson, Dr. Richard Coke, 
who makes Louisville his home. 

Mary Guthrie married a second time, John 
Caperton, and was the mother of John H. Caper- 
ton, who married Virginia Standiford, and has a 
son, Hugh John Caperton, whose wife was 
Dorothy Bonnie. 

Following her first husband's death, Mary 
Churchill Prather married Alexander Scott Bul- 
litt, this being his second marriage also. 



42 




"LOCUST GROVE" 

The home of Major William Croughan and his wife, Lucy 
Clark. 

The house, still standing, is about three fourths of a mile 
south of Blankenbaker's Station on the Prospect line. It was 
here that Gen. George Rogers Clark died on February 13, 
1818. 



The Clark Family. 

KENTUCKY is justly famed for her hos- 
pitality, but an incident of inhospitality 
in a pioneer home on the Ohio river 
near Carrollton is the basis of an interesting 
anecdote for the descendants of John and 
Anne Rogers Clark, who emigrated from Vir- 
ginia in 1 784 to take up their residence at 
the Falls of the Ohio, where a home, "Mul- 
berry Hill,** had been made ready for them by 
their son. Gen. George Rogers Clark. Mr. and 
Mrs. Clark, their children and servants, escaped 
death at the hands of Indians when Mrs. Elliott, 
the wife of a Capt. Elliott, who had frequently 
been a guest at the Clark home in Caroline 
county, Va., failed to extend the courtesy of her 
house and board to them on March 3, 1 785, 
as they voyaged down the Ohio. 

The Clarks had apprised Capt. Elliott of their 
plans to journey to the new settlement, and had 
been urged by him to visit his home and to be- 
come acquainted with his wife and young 
daughter, of whom they had so often heard him 
speak. Although they left Virginia in October, 
owing to the bad condition of the roads, the in- 
clemency of the weather, and the obstructions in 



45 



Louisville's First Families 

the Monongahela, it was March when the party 
in boats arrived at the mouth of the Kentucky. 
John Clark and one of his men landing, went 
ahead to announce to Capt. Elliott the arrival of 
the party. Clark was greeted by Mrs. Elliott, 
who told of her husband's absence on a hunt- 
ing trip. Abashed at the coolness of his recep- 
tion Clark joined the travel-worn party in the 
boats and proceeded to Fort Nelson, where they 
were welcomed by the settlers. 

Hardly had the Clarks resumed their journey 
before Indians on the war-path attacked the 
Elliott cabin, killing and scalping Capt. Elliott's 
brother, who, with several of his workmen, ar- 
rived immediately after Clark's departure to be 
mortified that his sister-in-law had not dispensed 
hospitality to the travelers. Mrs. Elliott and her 
daughter made a miraculous escape from the 
cabin to the river bank, unseen by the savages. 
They were joined by Capt. Elliott, who, return- 
ing unexpectedly, saw the warriors' canoes on the 
river and his home in flames. The Elliotts, hav- 
ing rescued the body of their kinsman from the 
ruins, embarked to seek security at Fort Nelson, 
where they were comforted and befriended, first 
of all, by the Clarks. 

Mrs. Elliott offered excuses for her inhospitality, 
relating her confusion at the thought of receiving 
the Clarks in her crude frontier dwelling, know- 



46 



Clark 

ing as she did the style and comfort of their 
life in Virginia, explaining that in years she had 
not seen any white persons save the members of 
her own family, that she was overcome with 
embarrassment at the encounter. She assured 
Mrs. Clark that the latter owed her life and that 
of her family to this breach of courtesy. 

The pioneers John and Anne Rogers Clark 
had ten children, six sons, five of whom were offi- 
cers in the Revolutionary war, the sixth being too 
young to serve; four daughters, two of whom 
married officers, and two soldiers in the Con- 
tinental army. 

Gen. George Rogers Clark, whose history- 
making career is too well known to be repeated 
here, had been in Louisville long enough to 
change his residence several times before his par- 
ents decided to join him, having moved with the 
first settler families from Com Island in 1779 
to a fort at the foot of Twelfth street, and in 1 782 
to Fort Nelson, built by the troops on the north 
side of Main street, between Sixth and Eighth. 

"Mulberry Hill," a fine estate two miles east 
of the city limits, boasted a spacious double-log 
house, with a wide hall through the center. There 
were four large square rooms, porches and store 
rooms, with the kitchen in a separate building 
some distance from the house and near the 
spring. 



47 



Louisville's First Families 

Gen. Jonathan Clark, who came to Louisville 
years later than the other members of the family, 
had married Sarah Hite in Virginia. He built 
a home at "Trough Spring,*' east of Mulberry 
Hill. The Bernheim place, Shadyside, and the 
old Richardson place are part of his farm. A 
French cabinetmaker came from New Orleans 
to make the furniture for his use. His daughter, 
Anna Clark, who married James Anderson 
Pearce, came into possession of "Trough Spring" 
and used it as a country house, her home in town 
being on the River front. When old Fort Nel- 
son was razed and the property sold, Pearce 
bought the land and erected a brick dwelling with 
an iron veranda, at what is now the comer of 
Seventh and Water. This home, in which the 
Pearce children were born, was torn down when 
the' property again changed hands, and the Burge 
home was built there. 

James Pearce, who was a Virginieui, a man of 
affairs and considerable means, presented the 
river frontage before his home, the two blocks 
of Water street and wharf, to the city, making 
a proviso in the deed which brought an interest- 
ing suit in 1 880. In that year the C. & O. rail- 
road attempted to obtain a right of way for a 
line along the river front and was bitterly op- 
posed by merchants of the city who protested that 
the business on the wharf would be ruined by 



48 



Clark 

this arrangement. A number of indignation meet- 
ings were held, attended by business men of Lou- 
isville. Temple Bodley, a young lawyer in those 
days, a grandson of James Pearce, was ap- 
proached by a committee of merchants to ask 
his mother, Mrs. William S. Bodley, to file a suit 
to prevent this use of her father's gift, for they 
had found the old deed which provided that if 
the city permitted any building, etc., to be 
erected, obstructing the view of the Ohio river 
from the donor's home, garden or vineyard, the 
property should revert to the heirs. Mrs. Bodley 
brought the suit and an injunction was granted. 

There are no descendants of Gen. George 
Rogers Clark in Louisville, for that distinguished 
member of the Clark family was never married. 

Gen. Jonathan Clark and his wife, SareJi Hite, 
had seven children, three of whom have 
descendants in the city. Their eldest daughter, 
Eleanor Eltinge Clark, married Dr. Benjamin 
Temple, the prominent Methodist minister, and 
their family also was a large one. Their son, 
John B. Temple, whose third wife was Blandina 
Brodhead, was a prominent banker and 
man of affairs in Frankfort and later in Louis- 
ville, being president of the Mutual Life Insurance 
Company. His widow made her home in Lou- 
isville with her daughters, Mary Temple (Mrs. 
R. A. Robinson) and Annie Temple, her death 



49 



Louise ille* s First Families 

taking place last year. Another daughter is 
Blandina (Mrs. William Griffiths). 

Ann Clark, the third daughter of Gen. Jonathan 
Clark, married James Anderson Pearce, and to 
them eight children were bom. Their son, Ed- 
mund Pearce, who married Myra Steele, was the 
father of Amelia Neville Pearce, who became the 
wife of George Weissinger, and of John C. Pearce, 
who married Susannah Steele. Mrs. Frank 
Snead, Mrs. Nolan Milton and John Clark Pearce 
are the children of John and Susannah Pearce, 
Ellen Pearce married the lawyer. Judge William 
S. Bodley, and was the mother of eleven chil- 
dren, of whom the following survive: Martha 
and Ann Jane Bodley, who live together on 
Fourth street; William Stewart Bodley, and 
Temple Bodley, who married Edith Fosdick. 

Dr. William Clark, the son of Gen Jonathan 
Clark, married Frances Ann Tompkins. He in- 
herited the Mulberry Hill home of John and Anne 
Rogers Clark from his father and in turn be- 
queathed it to his daughters, Mary, who married 
Dr. George E. Cooke, and Eugenia and Eliza 
Clark, who never married. 

Dr. Clark's daughter Ellen married Newton 
Milton, of Memphis, and her death occurred not 
long ago at the home of her grandson, Karl Jung- 
bluth, Jr., in Garvin Place. William Clark mar- 



50 



Clark 

ried Annie Bailey, and was the father of Kate 
Clark, now Mrs. John C. Doolan, and of Louise 
Clark, Mrs. Harry Whitaker, of Wheeling, West 
Virginia. 

Ann Clark, eldest daughter of John Clark, 
married Owen Gwathmey, and was the mother 
of eleven children. There are a number of her 
descendants in Kentucky. Samuel Gwathmey, 
who married Mary Booth, member of a promi- 
nent pioneer family, was the father of Rebecca 
Ann Gwathmey, who married Henry S. Tyler, 
of the distinguished family of that name and a 
descendant of the Oldhams. To Rebecca and 
Henry S. Tyler five children were born, and a 
number of their grandchildren are prominent here. 
The oldest son, Isaac Tyler, who married Jennie 
Owen, of St. Louis, was the father of Owen Tyler, 
Rebecca, Mrs. Harry L. Smyser, Isaac Tyler and 
the late Gwathmey Tyler, who married Edmonia 
Robinson. Virginia Tyler is Mrs. William A. 
Robinson, who with her daughter, Mrs. Spald- 
ing Coleman, makes her home on Fourth street 
near Kentucky. Levi Tyler married Maria Lewis 
and was the father of Mrs. James Franklin Fair- 
leigh and Henry S. Tyler. Ella Tyler married 
Lewis H. Bond and her children who make Lou- 
isville their home are Isaac Tyler Bond, Etta, Mrs. 
Dudley Winston, and Joseph Bond. 



51 



Louisville's First Families 

Diana Moore Gwathmey, a daughter of Ann 
and Owen Gwathmey, was the wife of Thomas 
Bullitt. 

Catherine Gwathmey married George Wool- 
folk, of the Virginia family which settled here. 

Elizabeth Clark married Col. Richard Clough 
Anderson, who settled here in 1 738. After his 
marriage Col. Anderson built a home in 1 788, 
which was known as "Soldiers' Retreat," on the 
farm which is now owned by A. T. Hert. This 
country place appears on the first maps of the 
county. 

Ann Clark, who married Owen Gwathmey, 
and her sister, Elizabeth Clark, who married Col. 
Richard Clough Anderson, are ancestresses of 
some Louisville families, for Anne Clark 
Gwathmey's daughter, Elizabeth, married her 
cousin, Richard Clough Anderson, Jr., who was 
one of the most distinguished members of the 
family. 

Richard Clough Anderson, Jr., was an eloquent 
orator, an able lawyer and his talents were not 
confined to Louisville where he practiced law at 
Fifth and Main. He was Speaker of the House 
of Representatives and was minister to Colombia. 
While the Andersons were in South America 
two daughters were born, Elizabeth and Anne. 
The latter was called Anita by her nurse in 
Bogota, and in later life she was always Anita. 



52 



Clark 

Anita Anderson was a baby when she came to 
the States, the mother having fallen a victim to 
the climate, dying at Cartagena, and it is told 
that little Anita came across the Isthmus of 
Panama, mule back, swung in a saddle bag, baby 
on one side and sugar on the other. 

Elizabeth Anderson married Col. Stephen 
Johnston, U. S. N., and later L. M. Floumoy. 
By her first marriage there were two daughters, 
one, Hebe Johnston, the widow of Joseph H. 
Craig, of New York, is in Louisville, making her 
home with the Misses Blain and Judge Randolph 
Blain. The other daughter, Elizabeth Johnston, 
married Col. Julian Harrison, and one of their 
sons, Peyton Harrison, whose wife is Louise 
Wheat, has two children, Anne and Julian Harri- 
son, and Louisville is their home. 

Anita Anderson married a well-known Lou- 
isville citizen, John Thompson Gray, and a child 
of this marriage, Anita Gray, is the widow of Dr. 
James Thornley Berry, of Anita Springs, who 
makes her home with her daughter, Anita Berry 
Brooke, wife of Robert S. Brooke, of fine Vir- 
ginia lineage, and a descendant of Sir Alexander 
Spottswood. Anne Carter, Anita Gray, Eliza- 
beth Washington Berry, Margaret Lyle and 
Roberta Spottswood Brooke compose the family 
of Robert S. and Anita Berry Brooke. 



53 



Louisville's First Families 

Not long ago, Robert S. Brooke bought some 
farm land in Southern Indiana, just below Fern 
Grove; in going over the deed to the property 
he found material for an interesting tradition for 
his family. The land is a portion of a grant to 
George Rogers Clark, kinsman of Mrs. Brooke, 
made in 1 783 by Edward Randolph, Governor 
of Virginia, a kinsman of Mr. Brooke. 

Lucy Clark, another daughter of John and 
Anne Rogers Clark, married Major William 
Croughan, who had located in Louisville as early 
as 1 782. Their home was "Locust Grove," the 
scene of generous hospitality. Here Lucy 
Croughan*s brother. Gen. George Rogers Clark, 
died and was buried in the old family burying 
ground. 

Fanny Clark, the youngest of the four 
sisters, was married three times. The sons of 
her first husband. Dr. James O'Fallon, removed 
to St. Louis. Her second marriage was to Capt. 
Charles Minn Thruston, who fought in the Revo- 
lutionary war at the age of eleven years, seven 
months and three days. He came to Louisville 
about 1 793. To Fanny and Charles Thruston 
two children were born, a son, Charles W. Thrus- 
ton, and a daughter, Ann Clark. 

After Capt. Thruston's death, his widow mar- 
ried Judge Dennis Fitzhugh. Their three chil- 
dren located in Arkansas. 



54 



Clark 

Charles W. Thruston married Mary Churchrll. 
the daughter of Samuel Churchill, and a descend- 
ant of the Popes and the Oldhams. Their 
daughter, Fanny Thruston, married Andrew Jack- 
son Ballard, grandson of Bland Ballard, the cele- 
brated Indian fighter. She was the mother of 
the late Charles T. Ballard, who married Mina 
Breaux; S. Thruston Ballard, who married Sun- 
shine Harris, and Rogers Clark Ballard Thrus- 
ton. 

Ann Clark Thruston, the daughter of Charles 
Minn and Fanny Thruston, married Dr. Bernard 
G. Farrar, of St. Louis. 

The Thruston home stood on Walnut street 
near Floyd, where the Ballard grandsons were 
born. The house was torn down in 1866, and 
on the site a home built by Andrew J. Ballard 
and his wife, was completed in 1868. The house, 
now used as the Detention Home, was for many 
years their hospitable residence. 

William Clark, the youngest son, referred to 
above as too young to fight in the Revolution, 
was the explorer of the Lewis and Clark ex- 
pedition from the Mississippi to the Pacific, 1804- 
06. He was afterward Governor of Missouri. 

Gov. William Clark married Julia Hancock, 
of Fincastle, Va., and his son, Meriwether Lewis 
Clark, married Abigail Prather Churchill, of Lou- 
isville. Meriwether Lewis Clark, Jr., who mar- 

55 



Louisville's First Families 

ried Mary Martin Anderson, spent a number of 
years in Louisville. He was one of the incorpo- 
rators and the first president of the Louisville 
Jockey Club in 1875 when the first Kentucky 
Derby was run, and served as a judge at the 
track long after the club changed ownership. 



56 




"SPRING GROVE" 

The home of Samuel Churchill and his wife, Abigail Oldham, 
built prior to 1 804. They first lived in the little house at the 
left which Col. Churchill had built and occupied when a 
bachelor, building on a large two-story addition to accommo- 
date their family. The house still stands, facing north on 
the Preston street road, just south of Eastern Parkway. 



The Churchill Family, 

ARMISTEAD CHURCHILL, JR., bom in 
Middlesex, Va., in 1 733, was the found- 
er of the Louisville family of that name. 
He was a captain of the Farquier Militia in 
1759, and served in the Revolution with the 
rank of colonel. Col. Churchill married 
Elizabeth Bakewell in 1761. They settled in 
Farquier county, and to them a number 
of children were born. In 1787, when their 
youngest son, Samuel, was eight years old, the 
Churchills started for Kentucky with their family 
and their slaves. 

Armistead Churchill came through Cumber- 
land Gap and across the Wilderness Trail on a 
coach, driving four-in-hand. On reaching Lou- 
isville he was completely disgusted with the set- 
tlement, according to a tradition in the family, 
and would have turned back the next day, but 
for three reasons: the badness of the roads over 
which he had traveled, the Indians that might be 
encountered in the forests, and the fact that the 
Ohio river flowed down instead of up toward 
Virginia. Making the best of things he stayed, 
settling on land nearby and southeast of the 
city on a plot of ground, which as ''Churchill 



59 



Louisville's First Families 

Park" was presented to the city by his great, 
great grandsons, Charles T. and S. Thruston 
Ballard and R. C. Ballard Thruston. Armistead 
Churchill was buried there. 

Churchill Park is now part of the Remount 
Station at Camp Taylor, its present employment, 
serving a wartime need of the government, bring- 
ing it within the definition of the city's use of the 
property, which was given with the proviso that 
it be used for either park or playground pur- 
poses. 

It was this Armistead Churchill, of Kentucky, 
who changed the spelling of the family name 
which was originally Churchhill. in the Churchill 
Bible brought from Virginia, and which was 
destroyed by fire not many years ago, the names 
of his first five children were entered as Church- 
hill, while in 1770 that of Ann, the sixth child, 
was set down as Ann Churchill, omitting an h. 

William Churchill, the grandfather of Armi- 
stead, emigrated from England in 1 664 to settle 
in Middlesex county, Va., and to become one of 
the most extensive of the Virginia planters of his 
time. His home. Bushy Park, on the bank of 
the Rappahannock river near Chesapeake Bay, 
was noted for princely hospitality in Colonial 
days. A descendant, the late Charles T. Ballard, 
built a handsome house at Glen view, **Bushy 
Park," preserving the name of the Virginia home 



60 



Churchill 

of his ancestor, now occupied by Mrs. Ballard 
and her daughter, Mrs. Charles Homer. They 
will move in the spring, however, for Mrs. Ballard 
recently sold Bushy Park to Judge Robert W. 
Bingham. Adjoining this estate is "Fincastle," 
which preserves the name of Fincastle county, 
Va., of which the site of Louisville was once a 
part, the home of another Churchill, Mrs. 
Alexander Pope Humphrey. On the other side 
of Bushy Park is Lansdowne, the home of 
S. Thruston Ballard, with its handsome grounds 
and residence. 

Of the large family of Armistead and Eliza- 
beth Churchill, three children are ancestors of 
Louisville folk. The fifth son, Henry Churchill, 
married Penelope Pope Oldham; the youngest 
son, Samuel Churchill, had married Abigail Old- 
ham, the daughter of Col. William Oldham and 
Penelope Pope, and by his brother's marriage to 
his mother-in-law became her brother-in-law. 
To complicate the relationship of the descendants 
Charles T. Churchill, a son of Samuel and Abigail, 
married Sue Payne, granddaughter of Henry and 
Penelope Churchill. Henry Churchill was justice 
of the peace in Louisville in 1793, but in 1803 
was assistant to Stephen Ormsby, judge of the 
first circuit court in Jefferson county. He was 
one of the trustees of the Jefferson Seminary in 
1798, granted 6,000 acres of land by the legis- 



61 



Louisville's First Families 

lature. Later Henry Churchill removed to Eliza- 
bethtown. 

Samuel Churchill was a farmer and landowner 
who interested himself in everything designed to 
advance agricultural pursuits. He was also a 
member of the Kentucky Legislature in both 
Senate and House. 

Henry and Penelope Pope Oldham had a son, 
Alexander Pope Churchill, who married Mary 
McKinley, the father of Mary Moss Churchill, 
who married her cousin. Judge Alexander Pope 
Humphrey; the father of Eliza Ann Churchill, who 
married J. B. Payne, of Elizabethtown, and was 
the mother of Sue Payne, who married her cousin, 
Charles T. Churchill. Sue Payne and Charles 
Churchill have a son, Samuel Churchill, who 
makes Louisville his home. Another descendant 
of Henry Churchill who came to Louisville from 
Elizabethtown is Mrs. Edmund S. Crume (Eliza- 
beth Grimes), who on her mother's side is de- 
scended from the Churchills and the Paynes, 
and on her father's side had as a great-grand- 
mother, Maria Mervin Fontaine, of Louisville, 
who married Sterling Grimes, of Georgia, and 
who on her wedding day rode away, never to 
be seen again by any member of her family. 

Mary Churchill, who married Richjard Prather 
in 1797, was a sister of Henry and Samuel 
Churchill and had a daughter, Eliza, who mar- 



62 



Churchill 

ried James Guthrie at the home of her uncle, 
Samuel Churchill. James and Eliza Guthrie's 
daughter, Ann Augusta Guthrie, married Dr 
William Caldwell, the mother of James Guthrie 
Caldwell, who married Nannie StancKford; of 
Junius Caldwell, who married Ella Payne, of 
Georgetown, and of Ann Eliza Caldwell, who 
married Ernest Norton, the father of Caldwell 
Norton. 

Mary Guthrie married Richard Coke, of Logan 
county, and her grandson. Dr. Richard Coke, 
makes Louisville his home. Later she married 
John Caperton and was the mother of John H. 
Caperton, who married Virginia Standiford. 

Mary Churchill Prather married a second time, 
Alexander Scott Bullitt, but there were no chil- 
dren of this marriage. 

Samuel and Abigail Oldham Churchill had 
sixteen children, and their youngest, Julia, who 
married Dr. Luke P. Blackburn in 185 7. lives in 
the city at her home corner of Third street and 
Park avenue. 

Among their other children are the following, 
who figured in Louisville's society and civic life! 
Mary Churchill, who married Charles W. Thrus- 
ton, mother of Fanny Thruston, who married 
Andrew Jackson Ballard. Fanny and Andrew 
Jackson Ballard were the parents of the Ballard 
men mentioned above. 



63 



Louisville's First Families 

Samuel Bullitt Churchill, who married Amelia 
Walker, was a prominent man of affairs in Ken- 
tucky and in St. Louis, where he edited a leading 
newspaper. His descendants here are the chil- 
dren of his son, John, and his daughter, Mary 
Churchill. John Churchill married Eva Fergu- 
son and was the father of Matilda, Mrs. Herman 
Newcomb, and of Eva, Mrs. Frederick Smith. 
Mary Churchill married Dr. Richard Cowling, 
professor of surgery at the University of Louis- 
ville. Their children are: Matilda, Mrs. Arthur 
Sager; Louise, Mrs. Arthur Peter, and Amelia, 
Mrs. Karl Jungbluth, Jr. 

William Henry Churchill was twice married; 
first to Kate Clark and later to Clarence Prentice's 
widow, Juila McWilliams Prentice. Mrs. 
Churchill lives with her sister, Mrs. J. H. Ran- 
lett, on Ormsby avenue. 

Abigail Prather Churchill married Meriwether 
Lewis Clark, but has no descendants here. 

John Churchill, still another son of Samuel and 
Abigail, was twice married; first to a Miss 
Laurence, and after her death, at the age of 71, 
to Tina Nicholas. Their son, John Churchill, 
married Lucy Jones. William Henry Churchill 
and John Churchill had a home on Sixth street 
for many years, and were two of Louisville's 
most picturesque figures, distinguished-looking 
men, and practically always together. From their 



64 



Churchill 

father they inherited the land which is now 
Churchill Downs. Charles Thruston Churchill, 
referred to above, married Sue Payne, and was 
the father of Samuel Churchill. 

Emily Churchill married Hampden Zane, lived 
in her later life with her sister, Mrs. Blackburn, 
and died here a few years ago. Her descendants 
are in Canada. 

When John Churchill married Tina Nicholas 
their honeymoon was spent abroad, and it so 
happened that they were in London at the time 
of Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee. Col. and 
Mrs. Churchill were given cards to the ceremony 
at Westminster Abbey, and upon their arrival 
at the entrance were asked their name by the 
usher, one of Her Majesty's attendants. Hear- 
ing the distinguished looking gentleman say that 
he was John Churchill, the usher walked back- 
ward up the aisle to the very front pews of the 
chapel to seat whom he believed to be a 
Marlborough. 

William Henry and John Churchill leased their 
land, which is now Churchill Downs, to their 
nephew, Meriwether Lewis Clark, the first presi- 
dent of the Louisville Jockey Club. Churchill 
Downs in 1875 was the Louisville Jockey Club 
Driving Park, the name being changed afterward. 
The race tracks which antedate Churchill Downs 
were Woodlawn, on the Westport road, and 



65 



Louisville* s First Families 

Oakland, which was at the Seventh-street cross- 
ing. Early histories of Louisville record horse 
racing on what is now Market street as early as 
1 783, and a track at the foot of Sixteenth street, 
in the early part of the last century. 



66 



MARTHA POPE HUMPHREY 

Daughter of Alexander Pope and Martha Fontaine, 
sketched from a portrait which hangs in "Fincastle". the 
home of her son. Judge Alexander Pope Humphrey. 

Martha Pope married her cousin, Charles Pope, son of 
Wilham Pope Jr., and Cynthia Sturgess. After his death, 
she married the Rev. Edward P. Humphrey. Judge Hum- 
phrey's wife, who was Mary Moss Churchill, is a descendant 
of Alexander Pope's sister, Penelope Pope, who, after the 
death of her husband. Col. William Oldham, married Henry 
Churchill. Alexander Pope Churchill, son of Henry and 
Penelope Pope Churchill, married Mary McKinley, and v/as 
the father of Mary Moss Churchill. 



67 




TQHMOn 



MARTHA POPE HUMPHREY 



The Pope Family. 

FROM Westmoreland county, Virginia, and 
down the Ohio to the settlement at the 
mouth of Beargrass, three members of the 
Pope family journeyed in late 1779, or in the 
first month of 1 780, William Pope and Benjamin 
Pope and their sister, Jane Pope, the wife of 
Thomas Helm, the founder of the Kentucky 
family of that name. They were three of 
the four children of Worden Pope and 
Hester Netherton, John Pope, the fourth, re- 
maining in Virginia. Worden Pope rep- 
resented the fourth generation of Popes in 
America, before him being three Nathaniel 
Popes. Nathaniel Pope, I., of England, settled 
in Maryland prior to 1637, and was a member 
of the Maryland General Assembly in 1 648. He 
moved to Virginia in 1 650, and part of his estate 
was "The Cliffs," w^hich passed from the Popes 
to one Thomas Ley, ancestor of Robert E. Lee, 
the name of the estate changing to "Stratford.'* 
The bricks of which "Stratford" was built are 
said to have been a gift from Queen Anne. Ann 
Pope, daughter of the first Nathaniel Pope, mar- 
ried John Washington, who emigrated from Eng- 
land and was the great-grandmother of George 
Washington. 

69 



Louisville's First Families 

Of the three Popes who came to Louisville 
only one, William Pope, remained. Benjamin 
Pope removed to Bullitt county; Jane Pope 
Helm and her husband stayed only a year and 
then settled in Elizabethtown, establishing "Helm 
Place," vv'hich remained in the possession of the 
family until a few years ago. 

It is recounted that in the year which the 
Helms spent in Louisville, then a most unhealthy 
place, they lost three small children by disease. 
William Pope had married in Virginia, Penelope 
Edwards, a daughter of Hayden Edwards, of 
Farquier county, who removed to Bourbon 
county, Ky., to found a large and wealthy family. 
William and Penelope Pope had eight children, 
four sons and four daughters, and there are a 
number of descendants in Louisville. One 
daughter, Penelope, was the heroine of an inter- 
esting pioneer romance, and she was also one of 
three generations of Penelopes who were mar- 
ried very young, two at the age of 1 4, who were 
mothers at 15, and one married at 13, the 
mother of two children at 15. Coming down the 
Ohio river on their way to the falls of the Ohio, 
Col. William Pope and his family encountered 
a young soldier of the Revolution, Lieut. Col. 
William Oldham, and a warm friendship sprang 
up between Col. Pope and Oldham, who made 
part of the trip with the Pope family. Lieut. 



70 



Pope 

Col. Oldham was much attracted to Penelope, 
the young daughter of his friend, and announced 
his intention of coming back to claim her for 
his bride, which he did three years later. Old- 
ham was killed by Indians at St. Clair's defeat 
in 1 79 I . The marriage of Penelope Pope Old- 
ham, a widow, to Henry Churchill, and of her 
daughter, Abigail Oldham, to Samuel Churchill, 
brother of Henry, was recounted in the sketch 
of the Churchill family. The incident of mother 
and daughter marrying brothers had occurred be- 
fore in the Pope family, for Hesterton Netherton 
Pope, after the death of Worden Pope, married 
Lynaugh Helm, a brother of Thomas Helm, who 
married her daughter, Jane Pope. 

William Pope was one of the original trustees 
appointed by the Virginia Legislature to estab- 
lish the town of Louisville in May, 1 780; he made 
the survey of the town to carry out the plan 
of dividing the forfeited Connolly land into lots 
to be sold at $30 an acre; he was a justice of the 
peace in 1 785. William Pope was a veteran of 
the Revolution, as was his brother, Benjamin, 
and in 1 780 was made Lieutenant Colonel of the 
Louisville militia, to become Colonel of the same 
organization in April, 1 784. William Pope and 
his family settled on the Bardstown road not far 
from the city limits, the house standing on what 
is now the country place of Mrs. Harry Bishop. 



71 



Louisville's First Families 

The old Pope cemetery was on this farm, and a 
handsome monument stands there to mark the 
graves of William Pope, Jr., and his wife, 
Cynthia Sturgess. 

In the East End there are three parallel streets, 
William, H and Pope streets, which make a last- 
ing tribute to the memory of Col. Pope as an 
early surveyor of the town. 

William Pope, Jr., and his wife, Cynthia 
Sturgess, had a large family, their sons and 
daughters marrying into families of prominence 
and social position, but there are few of their 
descendants left in Louisville. Henrietta Pope 
married Thomas Prather Jacob, and their home 
was for many years on the northeast corner of 
Fourth and Breckinridge. They have two sons 
living, Donald Jacob, who married Hallie Louise 
Burge, and John I. Jacob, of Louisville and Paris. 
Another son, the late Rev. Thomas Prather 
Jacob, has two children, Etta Pope Jacob and 
James Baird Jacob, who live with their mother, 
who was Martha Baird. Henry Pope, who 
married Alice Miller, has a daughter, Anna, Mrs. 
E. C. Newbold, who makes Louisville her home. 

Alexander Pope married Martha Fontaine and' 
had five children, two sons, Henry and Fontaine, 
w^ho were never married, and both were killed 
in duels; three daughters, Penelope Pope, who 
married her cousin, William Prather; Martha 



72 



Pope 

Pope, who married her cousin, Charles Pope, son 
of William and Cynthia Pope, and after his death 
married the Rev. Edward P. Humphrey (her 
only child was Judge Alexander Pope Humph- 
rey), and Maria Pope, who married Allen P. 
Elston. The Elstons had a daughter, Fanny, who 
married Edward Payson Quigley, the mother of 
Eliza Quigley, Mrs. Bethel B. Veech, and of three 
other children who do not live in Louisville. 

The numerous descendants of Penelope Pope, 
and William Prather were mentioned in the 
sketch of the Prather family. 

The home of Alexander Pope, member of the 
Kentucky Legislature, prominent lawyer and man 
of affairs, stood on the south side of Jefferson 
street, between Sixth and Seventh, with a front- 
age of about 200 feet and extending back to 
Green street. Alexander Pope bought the prop- 
erty in 1806, and Judge Alexander Pope 
Humphrey inherited it from his mother, who was 
Martha Pope. Judge Humphrey was bom in the 
old Pope home and still owns a piece of prop- 
erty on the block, a part of which was the lawn 
on the Sixth-street side of the house, retaining 
it for its association, and oddly enough the win- 
dows of his law office in the Inter-Southern over- 
look the site of the Pope house, on which is 
now built a row of shops. 



73 



Louisville's First Families 

The Pope men were antagonists of Henry 
Clay and strong supporters of Andrew Jackson, 
and a tradition of the Popes tells of the caucus 
held in Alexander Pope's law office, which stood 
in the side yard of his home on Jefferson street, 
at which Andrew Jackson was brought forward 
as a candidate for the Presidency in I 824. When 
President Jackson visited Louisville he was de- 
lightfully entertained by the Pope families. 

Penelope Pope, one of the four daughters of 
William and Penelope Pope, is the only one who 
has descendants here. By her first marriage to Col. 
William Oldham she had three children. Judge 
John Pope Oldham, of the Louisville Circuit 
Court, long prominent here; Major Richard Old- 
ham, of the United States Army, and Abigail 
Oldham, who married Samuel Churchill. Judge 
John Pope Oldham married Malinda Talbot; 
their daughter, Susan Oldham, married Horace 
Hill, and was the mother of several children. 
Lily Hill married William Paca Lee and was the 
mother of Linda Lee, now Mrs. Thomas, and 
of Jouett Lee, Mrs. William Wallace, of Boston, 
who so frequently visits here. 

Major Richard Oldham married Eliza Martin, 
daughter of Major Thomas Martin, U. S. A., 
having a son, George Oldham, who married 
Harriet Josephine Miller, daughter of John Adam 
Miller. Alfred Violett Oldham, for many years 



74 



Pope 

Clerk of the City Court, is the only descendant 
of Major Oldham in the city. 

From the marriage of Penelope Pope Oldham 
to Henry Churchill and from the marriage of her 
daughter, Abigail Oldham, to Samuel Churchill, 
several of Louisville's most influential families 
trace their lineage, the Ballards, the Humphreys, 
the Churchills, the Jungbluths, the Peters and 
others, all mentioned in the Churchill sketch. 

Two sons of William and Penelope Pope, 
prominent men of their day, were John Pope and 
Nathaniel Pope, but they have no descendants 
in Louisville. 

While Benjamin Pope and his wife, Beheath- 
land Foote, settled in Bullitt county, near 
Shepherdsville, Benjamin Pope, a captain in the 
Revolution, was active in the shaping of the city's 
history. He was an ensign in Capt. James Pat- 
ton's militia, and assisted in the building of Fort 
Nelson. He was one of Louisville trustees in 
1 783. Among the trustees of Louisville elected 
in 1809 were Benjamin Pope's son, Worden, 
and William Pope's son, Alexander Pope. 

Worden Pope was one of three sons of 
Benjamin and Beheathland Pope. George and 
Benjamin Pope continued their residence in 
Bullitt county, while Worden Pope became a 
prominent citizen in Louisville. He was County 
Clerk for many years and was succeeded by his 



75 



Louisville's First Families 

son, Edmund Pendleton Pope, and later by his 
son, Curran Pope, the clerkship remaining in the 
Pope family for over sixty years. 

Elizabeth Taylor Thruston, daughter of Col. 
John Thruston, was the wife of Worden Pope, 
and there were thirteen children of this mar- 
riage. However, only three sons of the family 
are forefathers of Louisville people: Patrick 
Henry Pope, who married Sarah Lawrence 
Brown; Edmund Pendleton Pope, who married 
Nancy Johnson, daughter of Col. James Johnson ; 
Col. Curran Pope, of the Union army, a West 
Point graduate, killed at the Battle of Perryville, 
who married Matilda Prather Jacob, daughter of 
John I. Jacob and Ann Overton Fontaine. 

Patrick Henry Pope was the father of 
Edmonia Pope, who married Dr. William H. 
Gait, the mother of Misses Urith and Ellen Gait; 
and of Ellen E. Pope, who married Dr. John 
Thruston, the mother of Mrs. Sarah Thruston 
Hughes, and of Mary Anna Pope, who mar- 
ried George Nicholas, whose offspring is set down 
in the sketch of the Prather family. There were 
two other children who have no descendants 
here. 

Edmund Pendleton Pope was the father of 
Judge Alfred Thruston Pope, legislator and 
jurist, who married his cousin, Mary Tyler Pope, 
daughter of Col. Curran Pope. Dr. Curran Pope 



76 



Pope 

and Alfred Thruston Pope are the only children 
of Judge Alfred Thruston and Mary Tyler Pope, 
and live in their parents' old residence on Wal- 
nut street. Another son of Edmund Pendleton 
Pope is Brig. Gen. J. Word en Pope, U. S. A., 
retired, whose home is in Denver. Gen. Pope 
was at one time quartermaster general of the 
army, and was for a tiraie commandant of the 
disciplinary barracks at Ft. Leavenworth. His 
son, Worden Pope, spent the autumn in Louis- 
ville at Camp Taylor in the F. A. R. D., and 
was a candidate officer in the artillery school 
when the armistice was signed. 

Mary Tyler Pope, the mother of Dr. Curran 
Pope and Alfred Thruston Pope, was the only 
child of Col. Curran Pope, with descendants 
here. 



77 




"FARMINGTON", THE SPEED HOME 

A sketch made from a photograph used to illustrate Hay 
and Nickolay's "Life of Lincoln". Some years before the 
war, Lincoln made an extended visit to the Speeds at the old 
home, "Farmington", which was built about 1810. 



The Speed Family. 

THE recurrence of the given names of James 
and John in the Speed family, generation 
generation, is a striking point in the study 
of the Speed genealogy. It was a John Speed, 
son of James Speed, who founded the Louis- 
ville family just at the beginning of the Nine- 
teenth century, and who built in 1 8 1 the historic 
home of the Speeds — "Farmington" — five miles 
from the courthouse, out on the Bardstown road. 

Capt. James Speed, son of John Speed and 
Mary Taylor, was born in Mecklenburg county, 
Va., married Mary Spencer, of Charlotte county, 
served in the Revolution, and in 1 782 came to 
Kentucky. In that year his son, John Speed, 
afterward Judge Speed, of Louisville, was ten 
years old. Capt. Speed, with his wife and six 
children, crossed the Wilderness road and settled 
near Danville. One son, Thomas Speed, moved 
to Bardstown, but was in business at Shepherds- 
ville with his brother, John Speed, who, inherit- 
ing farm land from his father's handsome estate 
in 1800, established himself in Jefferson county. 
John Speed served in the United States forces in 
1 79 1 against the Indians. 

"Farmington" in Judge John Speed's life was 
the scene of lavish hospitality extended not only 



81 



Louisville's First Families 

to kinsmen and friends, but even to an army, 
for, it is said, that the volunteers for the War of 
1812, passing "Farmington," were entertained 
in entire companies and even larger bodies of 
men. 

Judge Speed was twice married, his first wife 
being Abby LeMaster, whose two daughters 
were never married; his second wife was Lucy 
Gilmer Fry, one of the daughters of Joshua Fry 
and Peachy Walker, a descendant of Dr. Thomas 
Walker, the earliest explorer in Kentucky, and a 
sister of Mary Ann Fry, who married William 
Christian Bullitt. 

Lucy Gilmer Fry came to Kentucky with her 
parents, who settled in Mercer county, and it 
was an odd coincidence of her marriage that 
like her husband she was just ten years old when 
her family immigrated to the new country. Her 
middle name, Gilmer, has proven a favorite with 
the Speeds, and it occurs in several branches of 
the family today. To John and Lucy Speed 
eleven children were born, and at a gathering of 
their offspring in 1881, at a Fourth of July pic- 
nic, 107 mdmbers of the Speed family in Louis- 
ville attended. 

It was to *'Farmington'* that Abraham Lincoln 
came before the Civil War to visit his friend, 
Joshua F. Speed, the fifth son of Judge Speed. 
The friendship, which was one of Lincoln's 



82 



speed 

strongest attachments, was the result of a meet- 
ing in Springfield, ill., where Joshua Speed spent 
seven years in his early manhood. He became 
one of Louisville's foremost business men, and 
his wife, Fanny Henning, of fine Virginia stock, 
shared her husband's popularity. She was the 
sister of James W. Henning, with whom her hus- 
band was in partnership in the real estate busi- 
ness. She had no children. 

The old home of Joshua F. Speed was "Cold 
Spring, " on the road from the city to "Farming- 
ton." Remodeled and with numerous additions 
the old house is incorporated in the present home 
of Mrs. Samuel C. Henning, near Cherokee Park. 
Mrs. Henning is not a Speed, but her brother, 
Calvin Morgan Duke, who lives in Ohio, mar- 
ried Jennie Speed, daughter of George Keats 
Speed and Jennie Ewing, and granddaughter of 
Major Philip Speed. The late Samuel C. Henning 
was a nephew of Fanny Henning Speed. 

Seven children of Judge John Speed's family 
of eleven children have descendants here: 
James Peachy, William Pope, Susan Fry, Philip 
J. Smith and Martha B. Speed. James Speed, 
born in 1812, was Attorney General in Lincoln's 
cabinet, was a widely known lawyer, partner of 
Chancellor Henry Pirtle, and was mustering of- 
ficer for the United States army in the Civil War. 
All the Speeds were loyal Unionists. James 



83 



Louisville's First Families 

Speed married Jane Cochran, daughter of John 
Cochran, and had a hospitable home at Sixth and 
Walnut. They had a country home on the site 
of "Campo Bello," the home of John M. Ather- 
ton, near Cherokee Park. 

James Speed served in the Kentucky Legisla- 
ture and was a member of the faculty of the law 
department of the University of Louisville. 
James and Jane Speed had six sons, three of 
whom live in Louisville: John Speed, who mar- 
ried Aurore Combs, father of James Speed, who 
married Jane Barker; and Charles Speed, who 
married Eliza Homire, and has two daughters 
here, Bessie and Helen Speed; and of James 
Speed, v/ho married Hattie Morton, father of 
Hallie, Mrs. Karl Harris, and of Nellie, Mrs. 
Edward Ream. In this branch of the family, as 
in many of the others, there are children and 
grandchildren living, but not in the ,city of Lou- 
isville, to which these sketches are confined. 

James Speed, whose wife is Jane Barker, and 
who is frequently called the "bird man," com- 
piled the material for the book, "James Speed, a 
Personality," privately printed by Hattie Bishop 
Speed after the death of her husband, James 
Breckinridge Speed, who had collected a great 
deal of material, and a number of papers and 
letters with the idea of publishing a life of his 
uncle, James Speed. 



&4 



speed 

Peachy Speed named for her ancestress, 
Peachy Walker, married Austin Peay, and her 
daughter. Eliza Peay, married Col. John H. Ward. 
Ossian Ward, who married Mabel Prettyman, 
and John Hardin Ward, who married Letty Lee 
Peter, are her only grandchildren in Louisville. 
Visiting here at present is another granddaughter, 
Frances Hartwell, of Cambridge, Mass.,' daughter 
of Alice Peay and Dr. Samuel Hartwell. 

William Pope Speed, named for Col. William 
Pope, the pioneer, married three times, and by 
his second wife, Mary Ellen Shallcross, had one 
son, James Breckinridge Speed, the successful 
banker and capitalist, who married Cora Coffin, 
of Cincinnati, having two children, Olive Speed! 
who married Frederic M. Sackett, and William 
Shallcross Speed, who married Virginia Perrin. 
J. B. Speed married a second time, his widow 
being Hattie Bishop Speed. 

Susan Fry Speed married Benjamin O. Davis, 
of Boston, who located in Louisville and was 
partner of William H. Pope in the Pope-Davis 
Company. Their daughter, Lucy Gilmer Davis, 
married J. Edward Hardy, and is the mother of 
Charlotte Hardy, Mrs. Charles Pettet Robinson, 
of Lucy Hardy, Mrs. T. C. Hobbs, of William B. 
Hardy, who married Julia Robinson; of the Rev. 
Frank Hardy and of Kate W. Hardy, who mar- 
ried Gen. J. M. Califf. Kate Davis married 



85 



Louisville's First Families 

Dexter Hewett and was the mother of Leonard 
Hewett, who married Margaret Fink, and of 
Henry Hewett, who married Bertha Cooper. 

Jane Lewis Davis married Dr. Douglas Morton 
and is the mother of Edward Davis Morton, who 
married Austine Barton (their children are 
Henrietta Barton Morton and Susanne Speed 
Morton, the latter, aged five weeks, being the 
youngest member of the Speed family) ; of Dr. 
David Cummins Morton, who married Mary 
Ballard, their children, Thruston, Jane and 
Rogers Morton, are descended from the Clarks, 
Churchills and Popes, as well as the Speeds) and 
of Lewis D. Morton, who married Mary Marple. 

Major Philip Speed, born in 1819, served in 
the Federal army as paymaster. His wife was 
Emma Keats, a niece of John Keats, the poet. 
Their home was on Walnut street, near Eighth 
street, and they entertained extensively. They 
lived afterwards on First street, rearing a large 
family. Their daughter, Mary Speed, married 
Enos Tuley, the mother of Philip Speed 
Tuley, who married Lida Swope; of Dr. Henry 
Enos Tuley, who married Ethel Brown Engel- 
bach; of Thomas Speed Tuley, who married 
Betty Watkins. 

Ella Keats Speed married Thomas Crutcher, 
and was the mother of Emma Keats Crutcher, 
who married James Gardner; of Thomas B. 



86 



speed 

Crutcher, who married Pearl Robb; of Mary 
Crutcher, who married Will Parker; of Philip 
Speed Crutcher, who married Anna Hall. 

Alice Speed married Harry P. McDonald, and 
has a daughter, Fanny S. McDonald. 

Thomas A. Speed married Amelia Harrison 
(now Mrs. Edgar J. Levey), and was the father 
of Meta duPont Speed, Mrs. Guy Warren, and 
Mary Tuley Speed, Mrs. Sam Young Bingham. 

J. Smith Speed married Elizabeth Williamson, 
and there were no children of this marriage; later 
he married Susan Philips, and their oldest child, 
named Elizabeth Williamson Speed, married 
Richard Jouett Menefee, and was the mother of 
Margaret, Mrs. James Ross Todd, of Richard H. 
Menefee, who married Edith Norton, and of 
three other sons who do not make Louisville their 
home. 

Joshua Speed, who married Carrie Nicholson, 
is the only one of J. Smith Speed's four sons 
located here. His children are: Evarts Speed, 
who married Mildred Vaughan; Susan Philips 
Speed and Abby Nones Speed. 

Martha B. Speed, the tenth child of John and 
Lucy Speed, married Thomas Adams, and was 
the mother of Gilmer Speed Adams, who mar- 
ried Lettie Robinson. 

Major Thomas Speed, Revolutionary soldier, 
the elder brother of Judge John Speed, whose 



87 



Louisville's First Families 

home was "Cottage Grove," at Bardstown, has 
several descendants in the city. By his second 
marriage to a widow, Mary McElroy Allen, he 
had a son, Thomas Spencer Speed. Thomas 
Spencer Speed married, first, Sarah Whitney 
Sparhaw, and their son was Thomas Speed, one 
of Louisville's finest citizens. He was a leading 
lawyer and for years clerk of the Federal Court. 
His wife was Lucy Buckner Speed, and for years 
their home was on Fourth street opposite Cen- 
tral Park. Mary Whitney Speed, a daughter, 
lives here. In her possession is the Speed Bible, 
in which eight generations have been entered. 
Thomas Speed's "Records and Memorials of the 
Speed Family" is a prized possession in the 
American homes of the Speeds. 

By a second marriage to Margaret Hawkins, 
Thomas Spencer Speed had three children, 
Austin P. Speed, whose widow, Georgia Mc- 
Campbell Speed, lives in the city; Canby Speed, 
who married Emma Fullinwider, the father of 
Mary Louise, Margaret and Emily Speed, and 
Capt. William Speed, whose wife was Helen Hart- 
hill; and of Louise Speed, who makes her home 
with her three nieces. 

The Speeds trace their lineage from John 
Speed, the historian and geographer of the Eliza- 
bethan age. 



88 




THOMAS JOYES 






Sketched from a portrait owned by this distinguished 
citizen's grandson. Chapman C. Joyes. 

Thomas Joyes was the eldest son of Patrick Joyes, founder 
of the Louisville family, was a noted linguist, fought in 
early wars, and was identified with the social and political 
life of old Louisville. 



The foyes Family. 

IT was after only three years in America that 
Patrick Joyes, of Galway, Ireland, cast his lot 
with the pioneers, reaching Louisville in the 
year 1 784. This Irish gentleman, after complet- 
ing his education in France and Spain, lived for 
some time in France, and with his wife, Anne 
O'Gara, of Ireland, sailed from Bordeaux and 
took up his residence in Philadelphia. Making a 
business trip to the Falls of the Ohio, he decided 
to settle here, and his first home, on the north- 
east corner of Sixth and Main, remained in the 
possession of the family for 99 years. 

The home of Anne and Patrick Joyes was 
famed for the hospitality of colonial days, so lit- 
tle understood by the most genial host of the 
present, with parties of friends and later of kins> 
men, arriving on horseback and by stage coach 
from Virginia and the Central Kentucky settle- 
ments, assured of hearty welcome. Those were 
the days of the trundle beds and of huge bed- 
rooms accommodating two or more of the old 
four posters, one of which slightly crowds the 
sleeping apartments of today. The style of 
entertaining continued in the Joyes family to 
the time when horseback rides were replaced by 
journeys on steam cars. In 1892, at the coun- 



91 



Louisville's First Families 

try home of Patrick Joyes II, near Shelbyville, 
called "Oxford" for his grandfather's boyhood 
home in Ireland, lavish hospitality was the echo 
of the century before. It was at "Oxford** that 
the second Patrick Joyes, with his family, spent 
the last twelve years of his life. 

The Joyes family is entirely distinct from the 
family of Joyce, whose name is pronounced the 
same way, and, in fact, with the exception of an 
army officer, who emigrated from Galway much 
later than the Louisville settler, there are no other 
Joyeses in the States beside the descendants of 
Patrick and Anne Joyes, and comparatively few 
of them. 

Two sons and three daughters were born to 
the pioneer couple at the home at Sixth and 
Main. All married and lived in either Louis- 
ville or Jefferson county. Thomas Joyes, born 
in 1 789, the elder son, is said to have been the 
oldest male white child born within the city 
limits. Like other patriotic citizens of his time, 
he had ample opportunity for military service, 
figuring in the Wabash Campaign of 1812, and 
with the rank of captain fought with the 1 3th 
Kentucky militia at the Battle of New Orleans. 

He was a surveyor and spent part of his young 
manhood in the office of the county clerk. He 
was sent to the Kentucky Legislature several 
times. 



92 



Joy 



e s 



He was one of the Louisville citizens to be 
pallbearer at the re-interment of Daniel Boone's 
body at the Frankfort cemetery in 1845. 

Thomas Joyes was noted as a linguist, inherit- 
ing the gift from his father, who spoke French, 
Spanish and German fluently. To these his son 
added several Indian dialects, and it was of him 
that Judge Fortunatus Cosby said he believed 
if Tom Joyes was shut up over night in the 
room with a Russian he would be in full com- 
mand of the language by break of day. His 
early holdings were Jacob's Park, then Burnt 
Knob, a farm of over 300 acres, and the major 
portion of Towhead Island (the Guthrie heirs 
and the widow of the Rev. John Norton owned 
a small part of the island). Burnt Knob was sold 
by Patrick Joyes II to the city for park purposes 
when Mayor Charles Jacob was in office. 

Thomas Joyes married Judith Morton Ven- 
able, daughter of Judge Joseph Venable, of 
Shelbyville, and had one child, Patrick Joyes, 
bom in 1826, at his grandfather's home on Main 
street. He was educated at Centre College and 
was a graduate of Harvard Law, was a public- 
spirited citizen and one of the first presidents of 
the Y. M. C. A. He was also the first president 
of the Charity Organization, now the Associated 
Charities, served on the board of the Cook 

93 



Louisville's First Families 

Benevolent Fund Home for the Aged, and was 
an elder in the First Presbyterian church. 

Patrick Joyes married Florence Coleman, a 
great beauty and a greatly beloved woman, 
daughter of Chapman Colemem and his wife, 
Anna Mary Crittenden. Their hospitable home 
was on Second street, next door to Christ Church 
Cathedral House. They were the parents of six 
children. Their daughter, Anna Mary Joyes, 
married Haiden Trigg Curd, the mother of Flor- 
ence Joyes Curd; Mrs. Percy N. Booth, who 
has two children, Florence Joyes and Alexander 
Gait Booth; of Pattie Curd, Mrs. Albert Hueling 
Davis, of Jacksonville, the mother of Albert 
Hueling Davis, Jr. ; of Lieut. Joyes Curd, United 
States Air Service, recently returned from France 
and now at a rest camp in the Catskills. Lieut. 
Curd was gassed while on duty over there. 

Chapman C. Joyes married Sallie Swope, 
daughter of Ben L. Swope, and is the father of 
Janet Staines Swope and of Thomas Swope, who 
has just been released after two years' military 
service. 

Capt. Morton Venable Joyes, Judge Advo- 
cate's Department, Washington, married Caro- 
line Hancock Barr, daughter of Judge John W. 
Barr, and is the father of Lieut. Watson Joyes, 
U. S. Engineers, in France, of Preston Pope 
Joyes, who married Nina Harlan Bingham, the 



94 



J y c s 

father of Nina and Preston Pope Joyes, of 
Florence Coleman Joyes, II, and of Morton V. 
Joyes, Jr. 

Florence Coleman Joyes I, and Patrick Joyes, 
Jr., make their home with their sister, Mrs. Curd, 
on First street, and another brother. Dr. Critten- 
den Joyes, who married first Lida Robinson, 
daughter of Worthington Robinson, and later 
married Almeda Griggs, of Texas, lives in Fort 
Worth and is the father of one child, Mary Griggs 
Joyes. 

Catherine Joyes, daughter of Patrick and 
Anne O'Gara, married William McGonigale, and 
was the mother of John McGonigale, of the 
old surveying and real estate firm of Henning, 
McGonigale & Hobbs. He married Josephine 
Miller Oldham, widow of George Oldham, and 
his children are William J. McGonigale, Florence 
Joyes McGonigale and Mary McGonigale. 

Nancy Joyes married Thomas Johnson, of 
Jefferson county, and was the mother of Thomas 
Johnson, who married a sister of E. D. Standi- 
ford. 

Thomas Johnson III married Betty Brooks, 
the father of Brooks Johnson, of Edward Lee 
Johnson and of Etta Brooks Johnson, Mrs. 
Edward C. Tyler. 

Elizabeth Joyes married William H. Sale and 
was the mother of William H. Sale, who mar- 



95 



Lou i sv i I le* s First Families 

ried Delia Nagle, father of Delia Sale, Appeline 
Joyes Sale and of Hewett Sale, of Chattanooga 
and Louisville. Another grandchild is Betty Sale 
Reese, widow of Edward Reese, whose father 
was Charles Sale. 

John Joyes, the youngest child of Patrick and 
Anne Joyes, was born in 1 799, was educated at 
St. Mary's College, studied and practiced law, 
was the second Mayor of Louisville, and City 
Judge from 1835 to 1854. He married Harriet 
Lanier, daughter of Major Thomas Martin Lanier, 
distinguished soldier of the Revolution. His 
daughter, Stella Joyes, married James A. Mc- 
Afee, of pioneer family, and was the mother of 
Annie McAfee, who married Robert Dulaney, 
and has one son, Woodford Dulaney, recently re- 
turned from service overseas, and of Leal Mc- 
Afee. 

Judge Joyes' daughter, Susan Joyes, married 
Major Edward P. Byrne, of the Confederate 
Army, and her daughter, Harriet, married Hea- 
ton Owsley, and was the mother of Edna 
Owsley, Mrs. Frederic Hill, of Chicago, and of 
John Owsley, of New Haven, Conn., whose wife 
was Helen Hall. 

A son, Clarence Joyes, married Mary Riddle 
and has a son, William Joyes, who makes St. 
Louis his home. Judge Joyes' other sons were 
gallant soldiers in the Confederate army: Capt. 



96 



J y e s 

Erskine Joyes, who was killed in action, attached 
to Second Kentucky Regiment; Lieut John 
Joyes, who served under his brother-in-law. 
Major Byrne, who commanded a Kentucky 
Battalion. 



97 




RICHARD SNOWDEN VEECH 

Sketched from a picture made on the day of his wedding to 
Mary Louise Nichols, Five of his six children make Louis- 
ville their home. 



The Veech Family. 

JOHN VEECH, born in Ulster, Ireland, in 
] 747, emigrated in his early manhood to 
settle in Pennsylvania. He was a surveyor 
by profession, and colonial records show that he 
was making surveys in what is now Jefferson 
county as early as December 21,1 785, on a per- 
mit from William and Mary College, signed by 
Thomas Jefferson. 

On his arrival in the colonies, John Veech 
joined a Scotch Presbyterian settlement at Union- 
town, Pa., and it was there that he married 
Agnes (Nancy) Weir. They came to Kentucky 
shortly after the Revolution, down the Ohio 
river, it is understood, on flat boats to Falls of 
the Ohio. Their first child, Alexander Veech, 
was born January 27, 1787, in Dutch Station, 
one of the historic forts which were refuge for 
the pioneers. The first Veech farm was on the 
Shelbyville road about a mile above St. Mat- 
thews, and some two miles from the old station 
and from *'Indian Hill,** which was the home of 
Alexander Veech, and has never passed out of 
the family, now being occupied by James Nichols 
Veech and his family. 

John Veech bought "Indian Hill** (of 324 
acres, the old deed states) on December 1, 



101 



Louisville's First Families 

1806, from Richard Taylor. The Veech family 
kept the property until 1814, when they sold 
to Zachary Taylor, son of Richard Taylor, 
founder of the Kentucky family. There is a 
tradition that when John Veech offered the 
Indian Hill far'm to Alexander Veech, the son 
refused it because he said it was too far from 
his parents' home. It seems that a dense forest 
stood between the two farms. However, in 
1833, Alexander Veech purchased the Indian 
Hill farm which was to be his life-long home. 

John and Agnes Veech had five children, 
three of whom left descendants, but only tv/o had 
families which figure in Louisville life — Alex- 
ander Veech and his sister, Sarah Veech. who 
married William Garvin. Agnes Veech died in 
1811, John Veech in 1817. 

Alexander Veech was a youthful Kentucky 
volunteer in the War of 1812, fighting in the 
Battle of the Thames. From early manhood 
he was called Capt. Veech, having commanded 
a home-guard which offered defense against 
Indian raids. It is interesting to knov^ that the 
Veech farm was named Indian Hill because of 
the marauders' headquarters located there when 
planning an attack upon Louisville. Two fine 
springs on the place proved a drawing card 
to the Indians when selecting a point for an en- 
campment. 



102 



y e e c h 

One of these springs near the Veech home has 
furnished drinking water for the family through 
several generations. The Indians chose the hill 
as a gathering point, and they deadened the 
lumber on this prominence as a forest signal to 
the braves. "Indian Hill" is on the Brownsboro 
road, and the rolling farm-land adjoins the golf 
links of the Louisville Country Club, which lies 
between the farm and the river. 

Alexander Veech married Olivia Winchester, 
daughter of Richard Winchester, pioneer from 
Maryland, in May, 1821, at the Winchester 
home. Vale of Eden, near Lyndon, afterwards 
buying out the other heirs and making it their 
home until about 1832, when they took posses- 
sion of "Indian Hill." The large white brick 
house on "Indian Hill" in which Richard 
Snowden Veech was born in 1833 was added on 
to by this member of the family in 1881, when a 
wing was built at the side and the main 
entrance changed. This house is still occupied 
by Veeches. 

To Alexander and Olivia Veech were born 
four children, but Richard Snowden Veech was 
the eldest child, the only one to leave descend- 
ants. Born at "Indian Hill," when he died in 
1918 he had known no other home. Like the 
father and grandfather before him, he loved the 
land and farmed the acreage around his home. 



103 



Louisville's First Families 

after being educated at Centre College. When 
the farmers of four counties, Jefferson, Oldham, 
Bullitt and Shelby, organized the Farmers and 
Drovers' Bank, Richard Veech was made cashier 
and was active in its management from 1 868 
until 1 880, when he became president of the 
New Albany and Monon Railroad. While he 
was in business in Louisville for some twenty 
years, he was best known as the distinguished 
horse breeder, and he built up a reputation for 
Indian Hill Farm from coast to coast, as the 
home of fine trotting stock. 

He established the Indian Hill Farm in 1872, 
putting at the head of the breeding farm, 
Princeps, a descendant of Woodford Mambrino, 
who was the most prominent branch of the 
Mambrino Chief family, which was at that time 
one of the most prominent factors in the trotting 
horse world. 

While 1878 was the banner year of the 
famous stock farm, breeding trotters was a lucra- 
tive business there for twenty years and with 
the horse interest a picturesque life set in at 
Indian Hill. Because the land was very roll- 
ing, a half mile straightway dash was used for 
training; there were generally from fifty to sixty 
brood-mares on the farm. 

From 1878 to 1885, particularly, and in other 
years, also, prominent business men and horse 



104 



y e e c h 

breeders of the East, from New York, Boston 
and Philadelphia, made a practice of forming 
private-car parties (usually of two cars) to visit 
Louisville before going to the Lexington trot 
meeting. Here they would be entertained at 
dinner by Richard Veech and by John B. Mc- 
Ferran, who at that time, owned fine trotting 
stock at Glenview Farms. The horse-lovers 
would visit the two farms and would attend the 
sales which Messrs. Veech and McFerran would 
hold in conjunction at Indian Hill or Glenview. 
These sales were attended by horse-breeders 
from all over the country. 

Veech and McFerran belonged to Kentucky's 
big six, which included, besides themselves, 
Henry Clay McDowell, of Ashland; A. J. Alex- 
ander, of Woodford; E. G. Stoner. of Bourbon, 
and Lucas Brodhead, of Versailles. 

In 1881 Richard Veech acquired the Bear- 
grass farm of 700 acres, of which he used a por- 
tion for cultivation, with part in pasture and the 
remainder set aside for training purposes. This 
farm includes the ground upon which Dutch Sta- 
tion stood, and is now owned by Bethel B. 
Veech, who was associated with his father in 
conducting the stock farm from 1882 to 1897. 
Bethel Veech has a summer bungalow not far 
from the site of the old fort. Another pioneer 
fort, Cane Station, stood about midway the In- 



105 



Louisville's First Families 

dian Hill farm, and it is told that in recent 
years while plowing a portion of the land a 
number of Indian arrowheads were turned up. 

An interesting and unusual incident of Richard 
Veech's career as a horseman occured in 1918, 
the last year of his life. While ill at a hospital 
in the city he prepared from memory a pedigree 
list of some fifty head of trotting stock, still at 
Indian Hill, furnishing a record of each animal 
described to him, and, before his death, arrang- 
ing a sale of these horses. 

Richard Snowden Veech married Mary Louise 
Nichols, of Danville, Ky., whose parents were 
of Puritan stock from Rhode Island. The six 
children of this marriage are living, five of them 
in Louisville, the home of one daughter, Mrs. 
A. Hunter Kent, being St. Louis. 

Elizabeth Veech is the wife of Burwell K. 
Marshall, and the mother of Richard Veech 
Marshall, of St. Louis, whose wife was Helen 
Chauncey, of Olney, 111. ; of Elizabeth and Louise 
Marshall, now in France on Red Cross service; of 
Sallie Ewing Marshall, the wife of Nicholas 
Dosker, and of Burwell K. Marshall, Jr. 

Olivia Winchester Veech, Mrs. Kent, has one 
daughter, Mary Kent, the wife of Major Manton 
Davis and the mother of Olivia Davis. 

Bethel B. Veech married Eliza Quigley and 
has one daughter, Elston Veech, wife of William 



106 



V e e c h 

Mills Otter, who has two small children, Bethel 
and Ann Otter. 

Helen Lee Veech is the wife of George Twy- 
man Wood and has three sons, George Twyman 
Wood, Jr., who married Louise Robertson, of 
Washington, and makes New York his home, 
Richard Veech Wood and Thomas J. Wood, who 
is a student at Princeton. 

James Nichols Veech married Agnes Ross, 
makes Indian Hill his home, and farms as his 
father and grandfather before him. He is the 
father of Agnes Veech and of John Alexander 
Veech, named for John Veech and Alexander 
Veech. 

Dr. Annie S. Veech, who makes Louisville 
her home, has been on duty overseas with the 
Red Cross. 

Sarah Veech, daughter of John and Agnes 
Weir Veech, born in 1 795, was the bride of 
William Garvin, an Irishman from County Derry, 
born the same year as she, and emigrating to 
this country to settle in Philadelphia for a brief 
time before coming to Shelbyville, Ky. Sarah 
Veech and William Garvin were married Jan- 
uary 2, 1822, at the home of the bride's older 
sister, Mrs. Francis Veech Brookey in Shelby- 
ville, and on horseback the young couple left 
for Glasgow, their wedding journey to the new 



107 



Louisville's First Families 

home being made in the saddle, despite the bitter 
weather of mid-winter. 

Four children were born to the Garvins at 
their Glasgow home, which they left in 1827 to 
locate in Louisville. They bought a home on 
Jefferson street, between Fourth and Fifth, and 
they became identified with the social life of the 
city. William Garvin engaged in the wholesale 
dry goods business, and was a successful mer- 
chant of Garvin, Chambers & Co. and later of 
Garvin, Bell & Co. 

In 1852, the Garvins moved further out in 
town to a home on Chestnut street, which was 
to be the scene of elaborate entertaining for four 
generations of the family. 

For this home William Garvin found many 
beautiful things, objects of art from abroad. 
Two marble mantels from Italy, exquisitely 
carved and intended for the Chestnut street house 
were among the handsome fittings brought from 
Philadelphia, through the Erie CaneJ and over 
the mountains in wagons. These mantels are 
now in the home of William Garvin's grand- 
daughter, Mrs. Crittenden Taylor Collings, on 
Spring Drive. 

Sarcih Veech and William Garvin had three 
children, Jane Orr Garvin, Ann Eliza Garvin 
and Emmet Garvin. The daughters married 
brothers, John and Robert Bell, from Ireland. 



108 



V e e c h 

Jane Orr Garvin and John Bell purchased the 
Hunt house (now the Pendennis Club) and this 
was their home in the sixties. During the Civil 
War, John Bell receiving word that his brother, 
Lieut. William Bell, of the Confederate army, 
had been wounded, left for the South in 
search of him. John Bell was not destined to 
find his brother, and stricken ill on a train in 
Alabama, died and was buried in that State, 
many weeks before his family received news of 
his death. Lieut. Bell, fatally wounded at the 
Battle of Shiloh, was taken to the home of his 
cousin, Samuel Gwyn, at Memphis, where he 
died. 

William Garvin lost his life in the steamboat 
disaster on the Ohio in 1868, when the United 
States and the America collided. His body was 
washed ashore, and clasped in his hands was 
found the Bible which he had been reading. He 
was an elder in the Presbyterian church with 
which his family and the Veech family have been 
identified in this city. 

Ann Eliza Garvin, who married Robert Bell, 
inherited the Chestnut street house and lived 
there until her death in 1911. Jane Garvin Bell 
with her children returned to this house after 
the death of her husband, but later lived on 
Third street, and at an advanced age she died 
there in 1918. 

109 



Louisville's First Families 

Jane and John Bell were the parents of Garvin 
Bell, who married Ellen Robinson, and was the 
father of Nelchen Bell, Mrs. Alex Gait Barret, 
of Louise Bell, Mrs. Howard Lee; of Madeline 
Bell, Mrs. Robert F. Vaughan; of Robert Bell, 
of Florida, and Francis Bell. 

Jane and John Bell's daughter, Mary Jennie 
Bell, makes Louisville her home, and with her, 
a niece, Jeannette Garvin Payne, daughter of 
Elizabeth Bell and Henry Payne, of George- 
town, the sons of this marriage being Thomas 
Henry Payne, of Winnipeg, who married Amelia 
Brown, a descendant of a sister of William Gar- 
vin and John Payne, whose home is New York. 

John Stuart Bell and Sarah Francis Bell, both 
dead, were children of Jane and John Bell. 

Ann Eliza Garvin and Robert Bell had three 
children, Annie Garvin Bell, the wife of 
Crittenden Taylor Collings, and mother of Edith 
Collings Fisk, in France on Red Cross duty, of 
Allison Collings, and of Christine Collings, wife 
of William Hall, and with her husband and chil- 
dren, Edith and Noel, makes her home at Short 
Hills; Catherine Gwyn Bell, widow of Foster 
Thomas, who with her son, Garvin Thomas, lives 
in France, and Henry Bell, deceased. 

Emmet Garvin married Lucy Tomlinson, and 
their daughter, Sarah Garvin, is the widow of 
General John F. Weston, and is in New York 
with her daughters, Marie and Kathleen Weston. 

110 




rOH<HSOH 



JUDGE BUCKNER THRUSTON 

Senator from Kentucky, 1804-1809, retired to become 
United States Judge for the District of Columbia, 1809-1845, 
appointed by President Madison. He was succeeded in the 
Senate by Henry Clay. 

Judge Thruston was one of three sons of the Rev. and Col. 
Charles Minn Thruston, who came to Kentucky, inheriting 
their father's lands in this state. 



The Thruston Family. 

THE English Thrustons laid great stress on 
family records, and as early as the Seven- 
teenth century kept a genealogy which 
has been handed down from father to son, and 
after remaining in Louisville for three generations 
is now in the possession of Dr. Charles Minn 
Thruston, of Waco, Tex. Thanks to this old 
record book the genealogy of the family is un- 
usually complete, and the Kentucky family has 
not neglected to keep up the tradition chronicling 
the history of fighters and lawyers, men of affairs 
and of beautiful women. 

Col. John Thruston, of the third generation at 
Gloucester Point, Va., married Sarah Minn and 
had only one son, Charles Minn Thruston, who 
was known as the fighting parson of the Revolu- 
tion, although he was officially the Rev. and Col. 
Thruston. He was educated at William and 
Mary College, and studying for the ministry, 
went to England to take orders. He moved 
from Gloucester Point to the Shenandoah Valley, 
and the old church at Berr5rville, where he 
preached, is still standing. His military career 
started at the age of twenty, when as a lieutenant 
of Provincials he took part in the campaign 



113 



Louisville's First Families 

which resulted in the evacuation of Fort 
Duquesne. When the Revolution broke out he 
exhorted the Virginia youths to enlist, and at the 
head of a regiment joined Washington in New 
Jersey. 

The Rev. and Col. Thruston married, first, 
Mary Buckner, by whom he had three sons — 
John, Buckner and Charles Minn Thruston, to 
whom he left his lands in Kentucky. He mar- 
ried a second time Ann Alexander, and removed 
to Tennessee and later to Louisiana, where he 
lived on a plantation until his death, in 1812. 

John Thruston and Charles Minn Thruston 
came to Louisville, while Buckner Thruston set- 
tled in Lexington. John Thruston came west as 
a lad of 1 6 to fight under Gen. George Rogers 
Clark in the Illinois regiment. He served in the 
campaigns against Kaskaskia and St. Vincents 
(Vincennes), with the rank of cornet. He re- 
ceived in 1831 a grant of 2,666 acres of land in 
Illinois under the Virginia act of 1 7 79, which 
provided that the volunteers (officers and sol- 
diers), who served through the campaign which 
reduced the British forts in Illinois, should receive 
remuneration in land. 

John Thruston, who came to Louisville in 
1 789, married his cousin, Elizabeth Thruston 
Whiting, and their home was "Sans Souci," 
which stood on the site of "Hayfield,** the home 



114 



Thruston 

of Mrs. Robert Tyler. They had ten children, 
but of these only two are ancestors of Louis- 
ville folk, Elizabeth Taylor Thruston, who mar- 
ried Worden Pope, of the pioneer family, and 
Charles Minn Thruston, who married Eliza 
Sydnor Cosby, daughter of Judge Fortunatus 
Cosby, and his wife, Mary Ann Fontaine. 

After the death of John Thruston, his widow 
married Capt. Aaron Fontaine, the grandfather 
of her son's wife. 

Elizabeth Taylor Thruston and Worden Pope 
had three sons. Patrick Henry Pope married 
Sarah Lawrence Brown, and was the father of 
Edmonia Pope, who married Dr. William Gait, 
their children being Ellen Gait and Urith Gait; 
of Ellen E. Pope, who married Dr. John Thrus- 
ton; of Mary Anna Pope, who married George 
Nicholas, and was the mother of George Nicholas 
and Pope Nicholas. 

Edmund Pendleton Pope married Nancy John- 
son, and was the father of Judge Alfred Thrus- 
ton Pope, who married his cousin, Mary Tyler 
Pope, their children being Dr. Curran Pope and 
Alfred Thruston Pope. Mary Tyler Pope was 
the daughter of Col. Curran Pope and Matilda 
Prather Jacob. 

Charles Minn Thruston, born in 1 793 at Sans 
Souci, was a celebrated criminal lawyer in Lou- 
isville. He and wife, Eliza Sydnor Cosby, had 



115 



Louisville's First Families 

a large family, and there are in Louisville descen- 
dants of three of their children. Their daughter, 
Mary Thruston, married Dr. Lewis Rogers, the 
well-known physician, and was the mother of 
six children. Jane Farrar Rogers married 
Robert Atwood, her children being Lewis R. At- 
wood, Lizzie Atwood, Mrs. Oscar Beckmann, 
William Atwood, who married Nellie Stark. Her 
daughter, Mamie Atwood, married Tom Knott, 
and was the mother of Lewis Atwood Knott, of 
New York. 

Eliza Thruston Rogers married Dr. B. M. 
Messick, and their only child in Louisville is 
Martha M. Messick. Anne Thruston Rogers, 
who married Harvey Yeaman, was the mother 
of Dr. Rogers Yeaman. Harriet Rogers is Mrs. 
George Gaulbert, the mother of Carrie Gaul- 
bert, Mrs. Attilla Cox. 

Dr. John Thruston married Ellen Pope and 
was the father of Mrs. Sarah Thruston Hughes, 
whose children are: Commander William Neal 
Hughes, U. S. N. ; Major Thruston Hughes, U. 
S. A. ; Anabel, Mrs. Garnett Zorn ; Katherine 
Fontaine, Mrs. Walton Maxey, of Beaumont, 
Texas, and of Dr. Charles Minn Thruston, of 
Waco, Texas. 

Anne Blake Thruston married William J. 
Johnson, of the pioneer family, and was the 
mother of Charles Thruston Johnson, who mar* 



116 



Thruston 

ried first Sally Ward Danforth, and second, Miss 
Stuart; and of Lizzie Johnson, who married 
George Breed, and was the mother of Lilla 
Breed, of Louisville, and George and Edwin 
Breed, of Boston. 

John Thruston, the second son of Charles 
Minn and Eliza Thruston mentioned above, was 
a midshipman in the navy at 1 6, but gave up 
his commission, returning to Louisville on ac- 
count of his father's illness. He became a promi- 
nent Louisville physician, and during the Civil 
war was in charge of the Military Hospital at 
Eighth and Green for nine months. 

His brother, Charles Minn Thruston, was a 
deputy in the county clerk's office, then held 
by his cousin. Col. Curran Pope. Later he was 
elected clerk of the county court, filling the posi- 
tion for three terms. He made his residence for 
a short time in New York, and returned to be 
re-elected to his former office by a great ma- 
jority. He w^as a great political leader and a 
man of pleasing personality and wide popularity. 
His wife was Leonora Keller. They had no chil- 
dren. 

Capt. Charles Minn Thruston fought in the 
Revolution, at the age of 11 , as aide to his 
father, the Rev. and Col. Thruston, at the Battle 
of Piscataway. In 1793 he married Gen. George 
Rogers Clark's sister, Fanny Clark, after the 



117 



Louiseille' s First Families 

death of her husband, Dr. James O'Fallon. 
Their home was at Westport. Capt. Thruston 
was killed in December, 1 800, by Luke, his body 
servant, who feared that his master would punish 
him for repeated misdemeanors. Capt. Thrus- 
ton refused to take Luke on a trip back to Vir- 
ginia, and warned him that any misconduct dur- 
ing his absence would mean a thrashing. The 
slave had not attended to his duties during his 
master's absence, and before the return of Capt. 
Thruston, ran away. However, one night early 
in December, a servant reported to Capt. Thrus- 
ton that Luke had been in the kitchen and had 
stolen a leg of lamb. Capt. Thruston and his 
small son went out to look for Luke, tracking 
him by footprints in the snow. When discovered 
hiding in a corn shock, Luke sprang on his mas- 
ter and stabbed him with a carving knife which 
he had stolen from the kitchen. Luke was 
caught and was hung by verdict of the jury. 
Capt. Thruston* s widow married her cousin, 
Judge Dennis Fitzhugh, and her home stood in 
the square between Green and Jefferson, Brook 
and Floyd. 

Capt. and Mrs. Thruston's son was named 
Charles Minn Thruston, but owing to confusion 
arising from the name being borne by his cousin, 
the son of John Thruston, was called Charles 
W. Thruston. He was a successful manufacturer 



118 



Thruston 

and merchant, and his wife was Mary Eliza 
Churchill, daughter of Col. Samuel Churchill. 
Their daughter, Fanny Thruston, married 
Andrew J. Ballard, the lawyer. Fanny Thrus- 
ton Ballard was a great beauty and belle, and 
died in Vienna in April, 1896, while making a 
European trip. On this trip she visited the home 
of the early Thrustons, seeing the old manor 
house and porter's lodge at West Buckland, Eng- 
land, and an old church nearby, where her 
ancestors are buried within the chancel. 

S. Thruston Ballard and Rogers C. Ballard 
Thruston are her sons, the name of the latter 
being changed to preserve the family name of 
Thruston. S. Thruston Ballard married Sun- 
shine Harris, and has one daughter, Mary 
Ballard, who married Dr. David Cummins Mor- 
ton. The late Charles T. Ballard, who married 
Mina Breaux, was the father of Abigail Ballard, 
Mrs. Jefferson Stewart; of Charles T. Ballard, U. 
S. N. ; of Fanny Ballard, Mrs. Charles Horner; 
of Breaux Ballard, whose wife was Jane Fish, and 
of Mina Ballard, Mrs. Warner L. Jones. The 
youngest member of the family is little Freinces 
Horner. 

"Lansdowne,** the home of Mrs. and Mrs. S. 
Thruston Ballard, at Glenview, bears the name 
of the early Virginia home of the Thrustons, at 
Gloucester Point. 



119 



Louisville's First Families 

Buckner Thruston settled in Lexington in 
1 788, practiced law and was Judge in the State 
courts. His wife was Janette January, of Mays- 
ville. He was Senator from Kentucky in 1 804, 
and retired to become United States Judge for 
the District of Columbia. His home from 1 804 
was at Cumberland, Md. 

Gen. Charles Lee, a great personal friend of 
the Rev. and Col. Charles Minn Thruston, left 
his library to Buckner Thruston, saying that he 
was the only man he knew capable of appreciat- 
ing it. 

There are descendants, in Louisville, of the 
Rev. and Col. Charles Minn Thruston by his sec- 
ond wife, Ann Alexander, their daughter, Eloise 
Thruston, born I 792, in Virginia, marrying 
Major Edmund Taylor, and settling on Beargrass. 
Sarah Courtney Taylor, one daughter, married 
John De Colmesnil, and their home on Jef- 
ferson street, between Eighth and Ninth, was 
long a landmark of that old neighborhood. 
Sarah and John Colmesnil's daughter, Courtney 
Colmesnil, married John Murphy, of Nelson 
county, for years manager of the Gait House, 
and has a daughter in Louisville, Mary May 
Murphy, widow of Joseph Simmons. She is the 
mother of Courtney Simmons, Lily Simmons 
Huber, Joseph Simmons and Sarah Thruston 
Simmons. 



120 



Thruston 



Sarah Thruston Simmons was instrumental in 
organizing the Charles Minn Thruston Chapter. 
Children of the Confederacy in Louisville. 



121 




ZACHARY TAYLOR 

Twelfth President of the United States and a Major 
General, U. S. Army, from an old photograph in the possession 
of Hancock Taylor. 



The Taylor Family. 

AMONG the most distinguished of the 
early settlers in Louisville were the Tay- 
lor brothers. Col. Richard Taylor, the 
father of Gen. Zachary Taylor, president of the 
United States, Hancock Taylor, deputy surveyor 
under Col. William Preston, and Capt. Zachary 
Taylor, men of finest Virginia stock, who were 
prominent actors in the romantic history-making 
days before Kentucky was a State. 

"Hare Forest,*' four miles from Orange Court 
House, Va., w^as the early home of the Taylor 
family, founded by James Taylor and his wife, 
Frances, who came from Carlisle, England, in 
the seventeenth century. James Taylor was a 
man of affairs, interested in the well being of 
the colonies, and owning wide acres in Virginia. 
His only son, James Taylor, who was one of 
the first surveyor generals, was colonel of Orange 
county militia, a Knight of the Golden Horse 
Shoe, and a burgess of King and Queen county, 
1 702-1 714. His wife was Martha Thompson, a 
daughter of Col. William Thompson, of the 
British army, whose father. Sir Roger Thomp- 
son, served under Cromwell. After Col. Tay- 
lor's death, the House of Burgesses ordered Han- 



125 



Louisville's First Families 

over, Spottsylvania, and Orange counties to pay 
one thousand pounds of tobacco to his widow 
in recognition of his services in running the 
boundaries of these counties. James and Martha 
Thompson were the great grandparents of two 
presidents of the United States — James Madison 
and Zachary Taylor. From two sons of James 
Taylor II., Col. George Taylor and his wife, 
Rachael Gibson, and Zachary Taylor and his 
wife, Elizabeth Lee, of the Virginia Lees, are 
descended a hundred dozen Kentuckians, and 
from them come the numerous members of the 
Taylor family in Louisville. 

George Taylor was colonel of Orange county 
militia and fought in Indian wars; Burgess of 
Orange county, 1748-49, 1752-58; member of 
Committee of Safety, 1774-75; member of con- 
vention in 1775; vestryman of Episcopal church 
in King George county; Clerk of Orange county 
for many years. He was the father of ten sol- 
diers of the Revolution, nine of whom were of- 
ficers. James Taylor was sergeant major of 
militia, afterward Clerk of Orange county, a posi- 
tion formerly held by his father. Lieut. 
Jonathan Taylor married Anne Berry, of 
Gloucester, Va., and settled in Clark county, 
Ky., in 1 789, establishing their home, "Basin 
Springs.** Edmund Taylor was captain, serv- 
ing on the Virginia State Line; he married Cath- 



126 



Taylor 

erine Stubbs. Richard Taylor was commodore 
of the navy and received a thousand acres of 
land in Kentucky from his country in recognition 
of his distinguished services. Commodore Tay- 
lor lived in Louisville for a number of years be- 
fore his death in 1825. 

Francis Taylor was appointed a captain, but 
was made colonel of regulars in 1 779. Lieut. 
John Taylor was appointed a midshipman in the 
navy and died a British prisoner on the old Jer- 
sey prison ship. Major William Taylor served 
through the war, married his cousin, Elizabeth 
Taylor, came early to Kentucky, and was in Lou- 
isville, where he ran a hotel at Second and Main 
in 1812. He was very popular, and it is said 
that at his hotel the food was cooked and served 
in the best old Virginia style. Charles Taylor 
was sergeant's mate of the Second Virginia army 
and rose to rank of sergeant of regulars of Con- 
vention Guards, Reuben Taylor was a minute 
man for six years and rose to rank of captain. 
The tenth son, Benjamin Taylor, served in the 
navy during the war. Practically all of these 
men received large grants of lands for military 
service in the Revolutionary war. 

There are no more picturesque figures in the 
winning of the West than the sons of Zachary 
Taylor and Elizabeth Lee. Richard Taylor ren- 
dered valuable service in the Revolution, and his 



127 




WILLIAM BERRY TAYLOR 



SUSANNAH GIBSON TAYLOR 



These portraits of William Berry Taylor and his wife, 
Susannah Grayson Harrison Gibson, are owned by their 
grandchildren, Betty, Fanny and Robert Mallory, of Crescent 
Hill, whose father, the Hon. Robert Mallory, was a member 
of Congress and prominent in the social and political life 
of his day. 

William Berry Taylor was a son of Lieut. Jonathan Taylor, 
Revolutionary soldier, and his wife, Anne Berry. Their home 
was "Spring Hill" in Oldham county, and from them are 
descended many members of the Taylor connection in Louis- 
ville. 

William Berry Taylor was a cousin and a warm personal 
friend of President Taylor, who frequently visited his kins- 
people at "Spring Hill." 

Notably among the decendants of William Berry Taylor 
are Admiral Robert Mallory Berry, U. S. N., a grandson, and 
Admiral Hugh Rodman, U. S. N., K. C. B., a great-grandson. 



Taylor 

brother, Hancock Taylor, belonged to Washing- 
ton's company of Rangers. Both men stood six 
feet two and weighed about 230 pounds. They 
made the first trading trip from Pittsburg past 
the Falls of Ohio to the mouth of the Yazoo in 
1 769, and the same year from Pittsburg in a 
canoe made a trip to New Orleans, where they 
embarked for Charleston, S. C, walking thence 
to the Taylor home at Orange Courthouse. 

Hancock Taylor was one of the early deputy 
surveyors under William Preston and headed a 
party, including Willis Lee and Abraham Hap- 
stonstall, known to have made surveys in what 
is now Jefferson county, in May, 1774. The 
following year Gov. Dunmore, becoming ap- 
prehensive for the safety of the surveyors, 
ordered their recall, and Hancock Taylor re- 
ceived the summons while laying off a tract near 
the Kentucky river for Col. William Christian. 
He was, however, a victim of the Indians and, 
wounded by a shot from a warrior's rifle, was 
carried by his companion Hapstonstall to a 
point near Richmond, where he died and was 
buried by Hapstonstall, who carved his name 
on the headstone with tomahawk. Taylor's 
dying request was that his papers be carried to 
Preston in Virginia. 

Hancock Taylor's will left two-thirds of all 
his lands lying on Western waters to Hapston- 



129 



Louisville's First Families 

stall and Willis Lee, and the remainder of his 
vast estate to his brothers, Col. Richard and 
Capt. Zachary Taylor. 

Col. Richard Taylor, whose wife was Sarah 
Dabney Strother, came from Orange county, Va., 
to settle at Falls of the Ohio in the year of 1 785, 
bringing with him his family, including a son, 
Zachary, aged nine months. Some biographers 
of this same Zachary, more interested in him, 
however, as a President of the United States 
than as a youthful pioneer, claim that Zachary 
was born at "Montebello," the home of some 
kinsmen where the Taylors had been detained 
by illness of some member of their party after 
leaving "Hare Forest," the ancestral home of 
the Taylor family. 

Col. Richard Taylor established his family in 
a substantial log house on a farm five miles east 
of Louisville, which was known as "Springfield." 
Col. Taylor, who had been through the Revo- 
lution as a colonel in the First Regiment of Vir- 
ginia in the Continental Line, was soon a leader 
in affairs in both city and State. He was a mem- 
ber of the Convention in Kentucky, 1792-99, 
and helped frame the first and second consti- 
tutions of the State; he was one of the two men 
selected to have the first courthouse built in Lou- 
isville and served on one of the early boards of 



130 



Taylor 

trustees. He was evidently a man of wealth for 
he left his family a handsome estate. 

Zachary Taylor grew to manhood in the 
stirring times of frontier clearing with Indian 
fighting as a matter of every-day life. At eight- 
een he was a lieutenant in the army and eight 
years later he served as a major in the War of 
1812. The outbreak of the Mexican war found 
him in command of the American forces in 
Louisana and Texas, the crowning battle of his 
campaign being Buena Vista in 1847. Dissatis- 
fied with his treatment by the administration. 
Major General Taylor resigned and came to 
Louisville, living on a farm on the Brownsboro 
road in the months between his retirement from 
the army and his election as the twelfth Presi- 
dent of the United States. He died in office on 
July 9, 1850. 

Zachary Taylor was known to the army as 
*'01d Rough and Ready,** because he was ready 
for any emergency and took the rough end of 
every encounter, but he was also a man of cul- 
ture and refinement. 

The accompanying sketch of his family places 
him as a man of gentle birth and breeding, and 
his connections are with the most distinguished 
families of Virginia. One who knew him well 
described him as a man of great tenderness of 
heart, of gentle manner, devoid of self-assertion; 



131 



Louisville's First Families 

a silent man, but one whose dignity impressed 
all who came into his presence. Such was the 
character of this most distinguished of the Taylor 
family, whose name has been on every lip since 
the army cantonment named Camp Zachary Tay- 
lor to do him honor was established here. 

Zachary Taylor married Margaret Markall 
Smith, of Maryland, a daughter of Major Walter 
Smith, U. S. A. To them were born four chil- 
dren: Anne, who married Dr. Robert C. Wood, 
a surgeon of the United States Army; Sarah 
Knox married Lieut. Jefferson Davis, afterward 
President of the Confederacy; Elizabeth mar- 
ried Major William Bliss, U. S. A., and later 
Philip Dandridge, of Virginia, and the only son 
was Gen. Richard Taylor, of the Confederate 
army, who visited England after the war and 
was given much attention. He moved to New 
Orleans, married and had three daughters. 
There are in Louisville no descendants of 
Zachary Taylor. 

Col. Richard Taylor and his wife, Sarah 
Dabney Strother, had a large family. 
Their son, Hancock Taylor, married Sophia 
Hoard and had one son, William 
Dabney Strother Taylor, who married Jane Pol- 
lock Barbour, and whose son, Hancock Taylor, 
a Confederate veteran, lives in Louisville. His 
wife was Mary H. Wallace, and their children 



132 



Taylor 

are: Margaret Barbour, who married Judge 
Arthur Wallace; Letty Hart, the wife of the Rev. 
T. P. Grafton, missionary to China; Mary 
Strother and William P. and Helen Wallace, who 
married James Quarles, missionary in Argen- 
tina. 

Hancock Taylor, brother of the President, 
married again, his second wife being Annah 
Hornsby Lewis. One daughter was Mary Tay- 
lor Robinson, who married Archibald Magill 
Robinson. Their son, Richard Goldsborough 
Robinson, married Laura Pickett Thomas, and 
their children here are Eliza Lee Robinson and 
Judge Harry Robinson. Another daughter, Mil- 
dred Taylor, married John McLean, and their 
son, Hancock McLean, was the father of Mrs. 
Louis D. Wallace, of Crescent Hill. 

Edmund Taylor, the son of Hancock Taylor, 
married Lou Barker and was the father of Lewis 
Taylor, who lives here. Another son was Major 
Joseph Walter Taylor, who served in the Con- 
federate Army on Gen. Buckner's staff. 

He married Lucy Bate and was the father of 
J. B. Taylor and Jennie Taylor. His second wife 
was Ellen Bate, and his three daughters, the 
Misses Taylor, live on the Brownsboro road. 
Another Confederate soldier in the family of 
Hancock Taylor was Capt. Samuel Burks Taylor, 
who was one of the Confederate officers 



133 



Louisville* s First Families 

captured and imprisoned with Gen. John Morgan 
in the Columbus, O., penitentiary. It was Capt. 
Taylor who scaled the walls and made possible 
the escape of the prisoners. ' He was never mar* 
ried. 

Elizabeth Taylor, a sister of Gen. Zachary 
Taylor, married her cousin, John Gibson Taylor, 
and had several children, only one of whom is 
known to have a family here. This daughter, 
Sarah Taylor, who is buried in the old family 
burying ground at Springfield, was the wife of 
Col. W. R. Jouett, U. S. A., their children being: 
Fred Jouett and Lieut. Landon Jouett. Mar- 
garet Dudley, who lives here, is a granddaughter. 
John Gibson Tayor, Jr., was a Confederate sol- 
dier who was killed in action in one of the Ken- 
tucky battles. Other sisters of Gen. Taylor 
married prominent men and moved away from 
Louisville. 

"Springfield," the Taylor home of 1 785, was 
a substantial log house to which a brick addition 
was built, and later a brick house was added to 
the addition and the log building torn away. 
Hancock Taylor, the elder brother of Gen. Tay- 
lor, had a home on the Eighteenth-street road, 
but bought out the other heirs' interest in the old 
place and moved to "Springfield," where he 
died. Hancock Taylor was in the tobacco busi- 
ness, and as a young man was an Indian fighter. 



134 



Taylor 

"Springfield" is now owned by Dr. John A. 
Brady. The monument erected by the govern- 
ment in 1891, in memory of Gen. Taylor, is at 
"Springfield" burying ground. 

Capt. Zachary Taylor, brother of Hancock 
Taylor and Col. Richard Taylor, married Alice 
Chew, of the well-known family of that name, 
and settled on the forks of Hickman creek, in 
what is now Jessamine county. His daughter, 
Sarah Taylor, married Richard Woolfolk, a Ken- 
tucky pioneer identified with the early history 
of Jefferson county. It was he who caught Col. 
William Christian in his arms when that pioneer 
fell, a victim of the Indians. After the death 
of his wife Capt. Taylor came to the Woolfolk 
home, in Jefferson county, eight miles from Lou- 
isville, on land between Harrod's creek and the 
Ohio river. 

Samuel Woolfolk, a son of Richard and Sarah 
Woolfolk, was a well-known lawyer. His wife 
was Carrie Thornton, by whom he had five sons. 
Richard Henry Woolfolk, one of these, married 
Amanda Enders, of Paducah, and their son, 
Junius Woolfolk, lives in this city. 

A son of Lieut. Jonathan and Anne Berry 
Taylor was William Berry Taylor, born 1 768, 
who married Susannah Grayson Harrison Gib- 
son, settling in Oldham county, then Shelby 
county, in 1 796, on a thousand acres of land 



135 



Louisville's First Families 

bought from his uncle, Col. Francis Berry. They 
built the home, "Spring Hill/' the first brick 
house in the county, and the home remained in 
possession of the family until last year. From 
Spring Hill, Gen. Zachary Taylor, with one of 
his daughters and with his cousin, Betsy Taylor, 
who married Dr. William Willett, of the Bullitt 
family, rode on horseback to Frankfort to attend 
the first assembly ball, taking their evening 
clothes in their saddle bags. 

Abraham Hapstonstall, the surveyor, spent 
the declining years of his life in the homes of 
Hancock Taylor and of William Berry Taylor. 
He is buried in the Taylor family burying ground 
at ''Spring Hill.'* 

Several of the Revolutionary brothers, sons 
of Col. George Taylor, were pioneer settlers in 
Kentucky, and from time to time their de- 
scendants have drifted into Louisville from the 
Bluegrass, from Eastern Kentucky and from 
the neighboring counties. Among these Ken- 
tucky Taylors now in the city are the following: 

Mrs. John W. Green, Mrs. Alexander Mc- 
Lennan, Mrs. Jack Langhome Brent, Judge 
George Brent, Dr. E. R. Palmer, Mr. Edmund 
F. Trabue, Miss Alice Trabue, Col. William Col- 
ston, Mr. T. P. Taylor, Mrs. E. Polk Johnson, 
James Berry, Mrs. Robert Brooke, Miss Ruth Rod- 
man, Mrs. Sam Overstreet, Mrs. T. J. Howe, Mr. 



136 



Taylor 

Horace Hurley, Mr. Frank Barbour, Mrs. James 
Hegan, Dr. John B. Richardson, Mr. Samuel B. 
Richardson, Mrs. Harrison Robertson, Mrs. 
Thos. Kennedy Helm, Miss Addie Meriwether, 
Mr. Edmund Taylor Meriwether, Mrs. Baylor 
Hickman, Mrs. Gilbert Garrard, Mrs. Thomas R. 
Gordon, Mrs. Arthur Peter, Mrs. Karl Jungbluth, 
Jr., Mrs. J. K. Woodward, Miss Betty Mallory, 
Miss Fanny Mallory, Mr. Robert Mallory, Dr. 
R. A. Bate, Mr. Virginius Bate, Mrs. Cora Tay- 
lor Russell, Edward G. Isaacs, Mrs. Robert Herr, 
Mrs. S. E. Frazee, Mrs. Joseph Simmons, Mrs. 
Herman D. Newcomb, Mrs. Arthur Peter, Dar- 
win Ward Johnson, Mrs. Kate Johnson Lester, 
Donald Jacob, John I. Jacob, Wallace Taylor 
Hughes, William B. Eagles, Nannie Lee Frayser, 
Mrs. Barber Baldwin, Mrs. John Cannon, Dr. 
and Mrs. John Taylor, Rebecca Taylor, Sallie 
Taylor, Lucy Catherine Taylor, James Hughes 
and Mrs. George Grevemeyer. In many in- 
stances the members of the Taylor family are 
descendants of two branches of the family. 



137 




"BERRY HILL" 

The Bate home at Glenview, built by James Smalley Bate 
shortly after 1 800. The house is a splendid example of farm 
colonial architecture and is now owned and occupied by Mr. 
and Mrs. R. Baylor Hickman. 



The Bate Family. 

BERRY HILL" was the Virginia home of 
James Smalley Bate, and for that reason 
the Kentucky pioneer chose that name 
for his extensive acreage on the Ohio river, 
his estate covering the land which is now the 
suburb of Glenview, and the Bate residence be- 
ing the Glenview Farms, home of Mr. and Mrs. 
Baylor Hickman. 

Dr. James Bate, a surgeon, who emigrated 
from Yorkshire, England, and settled in St. 
Mary's, Maryland, was the father of the Ken- 
tucky settler. 

Dr. Bate married Susannah Bond, the daughter 
of James Bond, whose five sons fought in the 
Delaware Blues. The Bates removed to what 
is now Martinsburg, W. Va., and it was there 
that on attaining his majority James Smalley 
Bate married Lucy Moore Throckmorton, grand- 
daughter of John Robinson, speaker of the 
House of Burgesses, and great granddaughter of 
Sir Alexander Spottswood, first Colonial gov- 
ernor of Virginia. 

When James Smalley Bate and his family 
came to Kentucky in 1 789, their first location 
was Harmony Landing on the river above Pros- 



141 



Louisville's First Families 

pect. They moved shortly to Falls of Ohio, and 
their first home here was a twelve-room log 
house on "Berry Hill." The second house was 
of brick and stood about five hundred yards from 
the third house on "Berry Hill," which was start- 
ed shortly after 1 800, and is now the Hickman 
home. The house and grounds were planned 
and laid out, a composite of the old Bate places 
in Maryland and Virginia. 

James Smalley Bate was interested in the 
civic life of Louisville, and he was one of the 
founders of Christ Church Cathedral, and gave 
the land on which the church was built. He 
died in 1834, leaving a large fortune to his 
seven children, each receiving 500 acres of the 
estate. James Smalley Bate is buried in the old 
Glenview cemetery and here lies his mother, 
Susannah Bond Bate, who was born in 1 740. 
Dr. James Bate died in Virginia during the Revo- 
lution. 

The black walnut forest to the side of the 
homestead furnished the beautiful wood which 
is found in the mantels, and the woodwork and 
floors throughout the dwelling. The forest it- 
self was uprooted in the Louisville cyclone and 
the side of the house was badly damaged also. 
According to a tradition in the family, expert 
carvers were paid $ 1 5 apiece for the work on the 
mantels, which are exquisite in design. The doors 



142 



Bate 

for the house were brought on packmules from 
Virginia, and as the house was finished before 
the doors arrived, it was necessary to hang 
mattresses in the apertures when the family took 
possession of the house. 

The little attic room in the cupola, high up 
over the front door, is said to have been the 
household bank, and here James Smalley Bate 
kept the treasure chest with its stock of gold 
from which the expenses of the estate were 
drawn, and into whose coffers poured the wealth 
of this substantial and prosperous landholder, 
who did so much to advance agricultural pur- 
suits in Jefferson county. 

Gerard Bond Bate inherited the Bate home, 
"Berry Hill," and he sold it in 1869 to James 
C. McFerran, who, with his son, John B. Mc- 
Ferran established a famous trotting horse farm 
on the Glenview Farms. Later it was the home 
of John E. Green, and for some years has been 
owned by the Hickmans. 

John Throckmorton Bate, who was born in 
1 809 at Berry Hill, and lived to be eighty-eight 
years old, spent his life in that vicinity. In 1834, 
the year of his marriage, to Eleanor Anne Locke, 
he built "Woodside** within a mile of his father's 
home. The house still standing is a splendid 
example of the Virginia farmhouse colonial of 
white brick. In this house lived three genera- 



M3 



Louisville's First Families 

tions of Bates, the last owner in the family being 
John Throckmorton Bate, son of Clarence Bate 
and Octavia Zantziger, and grandson of John 
Throckmorton Bate. 

The name of "Woodside" was changed to 
"Arden'* when the beautiful place was purchased 
by Peter Lee Atherton, who continues to make 
it his year-around home. Many fine pieces of 
mahogany furniture bought for Berry Hill and 
Woodside are still in possession of the Bate 
family in Louisville. A quantity of the family 
silver was lost in a fire a few years ago. 

James Smalley Bate and his wife, Lucy Moore 
Throckmorton, were the parents of the follow- 
ing children: Catherine, James Smalley, Robert, 
Susan, Lucy, Gerard Bond and John Throck- 
morton Bate. 

Catherine Bate married Henry Washington, a 
Virginian and close kinsman of George Wash- 
ington, who as a very young man left the Old 
Dominion for the Kentucky settlements. No other 
member of his immediate family ventured this 
way, and when one of his descendants was seek- 
ing an accurate genealogy of the family it was 
necessary to make a trip to Virginia to secure 
data from the Washington Bibles. 

There are three children of Catherine and 
Henry Washington living at Irvington, Ky. 
Mary Washington, who married Theodore Mun- 



144 



Bate 

ford, recently celebrated her ninetieth birthday; 
Georgiana, who married Richard Herndon, the 
mother of Jesse M. Herndon, of Irvington, and 
Bate Washington, whose wife was Mary Helm. 
Emmaree Washington, daughter of Bate and 
Mary Washington, is the wife of B. Perry 
Weaver, of Louisville, and the mother of Ben 
Helm Weaver, Burton Perry Weaver and Mary 
Washington Weaver. 

Glorvine Eugenia W^ashington, daughter of 
Henry and Catherine, married Alfred Harris, and 
from her is descended a granddaughter, Cath- 
erine Washington Harris, the wife of Dr. Clint 
W. Kelly. She is the mother of Dr. Alfred 
Harris Kelly, whose wife was Amy Gunn 
Snowden before her marriage; Dr. Clint W. 
Kelly, Jr., Wager Swayne Kelly and Edwin Par- 
son Kelly. Susan Washington, another daughter, 
married Dr. Joseph Morrison Tydings, the 
Methodist minister, and their son Richard H. 
Tydings and his wife, Nell Mansir, with their 
four children: Joseph Mansir, Anna Ray, 
Richard, Jr., and Mary Avery Tydings, make 
Louisville their home. 

Lucy Washington married Junius Alexander, 
and their son. Dr. Junius B. Alexander, lives 
here. 

Lucy Bate, who married George Gray, had five 
children, but left few descendants. A daughter, 



145 



Louisville's First Families 

Lizzie Gray, married Mann William Satterwhite, 
and was the mother of George Satterwhite, who 
married Laura Hays, and of Bessie Satterwhite, 
the wife of Walter Stouffer, and mother of Walter 
Stouffer, Jr. 

Mary Gray married Dr. Coleman Rogers, and 
their only living child is Mary Rogers, Mrs. 
William O. Andrews, of St. Louis, and the 
mother of four children. William Gray mar- 
ried Nellie Snowden, and has living here one 
granddaughter, Eleanor Gray, the wife of 
Rudolph C. Krauss. Lucy Gray was never mar- 
ried. Ella Gray, one of the four daughters of 
Lucy Bate and George Gray, is the widow of 
Norbourne G. Gray, and has one son, Coleman 
Gray, who makes his home in New York. 

Gerard Bond Bate, who inherited the home 
place, died a bachelor. He was a Harvard 
graduate, and a man of great culture and refine- 
ment. 

John Throckmorton Bate married Eleanor 
Anne Locke, and had two sons, Octavius Bate, 
who died as the result of an accident while a 
student at Centre College, and Clarence Bate, 
who was educated at Brown's, a classmate of 
Elihu Root and John Hay. 

Clarence Bate married Octavia Zantziger, 
daughter of Major Richard Zantziger, and his 
wife, Mary Bullitt. There were four children of 



146 



Bate 

this marriage, three living, Octavius L. Bate, a 
bachelor; John Throckmorton Bate, who married 
Margaret Mitchell, and Octavia Zantziger Bate, 
who is the wife of Dr. Clarence Graves, head 
of the Baptist Mission of the South, at Nash- 
ville. 

John Throckmorton and Margaret Bate have 
two children, Margaret, the wife of Allen Ford 
Barnes, of San Antonio, and the mother of Mar- 
garet Ford Barnes, and John Throckmorton 
Bate, Jr., a student of medicine at University of 
Virginia. 

Susan L. Bond Bate married in August, 1826, 
Richard Taylor Robertson, the son of Isaac 
Robertson, who came from Glasgow, Scotland, 
and his wife Matilda Taylor, daughter of Com- 
modore Richard Taylor. The Robertsons left 
Louisville to make Brandenburg their home. 
They had thirteen children, and from one of 
these, a daughter, Susan Eliza Robertson, a num- 
ber of Louisville people are descended. She 
married her cousin, Richard Alexander Bate, a 
son of James Smalley Bate II, and his wife, Vir- 
ginia Alexander. 

Susan Eliza and Richard Alexander Bate have 
a daughter and two sons in the city, Fanny Bar- 
bour Bate (Mrs. Theodore S. Drane), Dr. 
Richard Alexander Bate, who married Julia 
Hornsby Calloway, a descendant of Daniel 



147 



Louisville's First Families 

Boone*s companion, Col. Calloway, the Indian 
fighter, and Virginius A. Bate, who married 
Eliza Johnson. 

Lucy Moore Throckmorton Bate, another 
daughter married Henry Watts Clark, of Chi- 
cago, and James Smalley Bate married Nell 
Semple, a cousin, and lives in Henry county. 

James Smalley Bate and his wife, Virginia 
Alexander, had a family of eight children, and 
their home was a part of the Glenview Farms. 
The couple lived there, died there, and their 
children are making their home on the land. 
Two daughters, Lucy and Ellen Bate, married 
Major Walker Taylor, Confederate veteran, and 
nephew of Gen. Zachary Taylor. From Lucy 
Bate Taylor, the first wife, are descended James 
Taylor and his sister, Virginia Taylor, who live 
on the Bate land on the Brownsboro road. 
Ellen Bate Taylor, the second wife, leaves three 
daughters, the Misses Taylor, who also live out 
on the Brownsboro road. Another daughter of 
James Smalley and Virginia Bate is Virignia 
Alexander Bate, who lives on a portion of the 
old farm. 

Robert Bate, son of James Smalley Bate and 
Lucy Moore Throckmorton, married Fannie Bar- 
bour, and had four sons, Gerard Bate, a bachelor; 
William Bate, who married Lucy Washington; 
Philip Bate, whose wife was Helen Bullitt, and 



148 



Bate 

Edward Bate, who married Fannie Mayo, and 
has two children, Rebekkah Bate Welch, of New 
York, and Yandell Bate, U. S. A. 



149 



liri 1 1 i mi ■■ I I n ii ] i i if i m 




^^^P ,:»^^m:: .r:^^ 



^^^iii 



'.V V//'.'<'Vv.VVw\'-.' .'■'■'■ '•i':: '.'r*'fe^i'-" 










COLONEL JOHN FLOYD 

Sketched from the photograph of an old picture which hung 
in Col. R. T. Durrett's library, used to illustrate William 
Floyd Tuley's "Genealogy of the Tuley and Floyd Families". 

Photographs of Colonel Floyd's son and grandson, the 
John Floyds, who were Governors of Virginia, bear a striking 
resemblance to this old likeness of the vigorous pioneer. 



The Fioyd Family. I. 

E~^TERS written by Col. John Floyd to his 
chief, Col. William Preston, county lieuten- 
ant and surveyor of Fincastle county, Va., 
present an exceptionally fine picture of how Ken- 
tucky was wrested from the Indians and of the 
early settling of Louisville and of the Central Ken- 
tucky towns, but are even more interesting in 
the light they cast upon their author, John Floyd, 
pioneer statesman and surveyor, and Kentucky's 
hero of heroes. 

A Virginia gentleman of rare mental attain- 
ments, brave as a lion, a true friend, of the warm- 
est affections. Col. Floyd reveals himself in his 
letters to Col. Preston and to Gen. George 
Rogers Clark, letters written between 1774 and 
1 783, the best years and the last years of his 
life, for at thirty-three Floyd was a victim of the 
Indians. While comparatively little has been 
recorded in histories, Floyd's letters are pre- 
served in the Virginia Archives and the Draper 
MSS., making an authentic memorial to his 
achievements. 

John Floyd was bom in 1 750, in Amherst 
county, Va., a son of Col. William Floyd and 
Abigail (or Abediah) Davis Floyd, and one of a 



153 



Louisville's First Families 

number of children who later emigrated to Ken- 
tucky to become founders of Louisville families. 
Abigail Davis was a sister of Evan Davis, grand- 
father of Jefferson Davis, according to a tradi- 
tion in the family, and like her husband was de- 
scended from Welsh emigrants to Virginia. In 
1772, John Floyd moved to Fincastle county, 
where he taught school, living in the home of Col. 
William Preston. Two years later Preston made 
Floyd a deputy surveyor and appointed him chief 
of a surveying party to Kentucky, then known 
as a part of Fincastle county. The party set out 
on April 7 from Col. Preston's home at 1 o'clock 
in the afternoon in high spirits, escorted three 
miles by the surveyor, according to Hanson's 
Journal, kept by one of Floyd's party, Thomas 
Hanson, a young gentleman who faithfully set 
down the traveling experiences of the brave little 
band. He tells how they received news of battles 
with the Indians; of meeting up with friends in 
the forest and having a feast of bear meat; of 
overtaking Hancock Taylor at the head of an- 
other surveying party, and of the men proceed- 
ing together in great harmony; of Mr. Floyd lay- 
ing off two thousand acres of land on Cole river 
for Col. George Washington; of lands surveyed 
in Kentucky for Patrick Henry and other promi- 
nent men of the time. Floyd's special mission 
on his first trip was to make survey of the bounty 



154 



Floyd 

lands offered to veterans of the French and 
Indian Wars. In that year the activities of the 
hostile Indians led Dunmore to order the recall 
of the Virginia surveyors, and Daniel Boone was 
sent by Preston to order Floyd to bring in his 
men. On the 26th of August Floyd writes to 
Preston: "You will hear by Capt. Russell of the 
death of Mr. Hancock Taylor and one of the 
company, my poor brother sufferers whose deaths 
I hope to revenge yet," showing that even this 
early in his work he had cast his lot with the 
cause of Kentucky. 

Floyd then joined the forces of Gen. Andrew 
Lewis, but was not in time for the fighting at 
Point Pleasant. In January, 1775, he was sent 
back to Kentucky by his chief to make a survey 
on soldier claims and established the station of 
St. Asaph. In May he was on Dix river with his 
party and met up with Lieut. John Henderson, 
of the Transylvania Company, a settler at 
Boonesborough, who distrusted Floyd because 
he represented Col. Preston, whose interests and 
Henderson's did not coincide. Regarding Floyd, 
Henderson made the following entry in his jour- 
nal on May 3, 1775: 

"Capt. John Floyd arrived here conducted by 
one John Drake, from a camp on the Dix river, 
where he had left about thirty of his company 
from Virginia. He said he was sent by them to 



155 



Louisville's First Families 

know on what terms they might settle on our 
lands. This man appeared to have a great share 
of modesty, an honest, open countenance and no 
small share of good sense, and, petitioning in 
behalf of himself and his whole company, among 
whom were one Mr. Dandridge (Alexander Spotts- 
wood Dandridge), and one Mr. Todd, two gents 
of the law, in their own right, and several other 
young gents of good family, we thought it ad- 
visable to secure them to our interest if possible, 
and not show the least distrust of the intentions 
of Capt. Floyd, on whom we intend to keep a 
strict watch." 

However, Floyd effected an understanding 
with Henderson and did not participate in the 
land fights that ensued. 

In a letter from Boonesborough to Col. Pres- 
ton, written July 21, 1 776, he describes the rescue 
of the Calloway girls and Daniel Boone's 
daughter from the Indians, after they had been 
taken captives from a canoe on the river. He 
cites this among the Indian depredations, and 
concludes: **If the war becomes general, which 
there now is the greatest appearance of, our 
situation is truly alarming. I want to return as 
much as any person can do, but if I leave the 
country now, there is scarcely one single man 
hereabouts but that will follow my example. 
When I think of the deplorable conditions a few 



156 



Floyd 

helpless families are likely to be in, I conclude to 
sell my life as dear as I can, in their defense, 
rather than to make an ignominious escape. 

"I do, at the request and in behalf of all the 
distressed women and children, and other in- 
habitants of this place, implore the aid of every 
leading man who has it in his power to give them 
any relief.'* 

But the war was on in earnest and Capt. 
Floyd returned to Virginia, where he was given 
charge of the privateer Phoenix, sent out to prey 
upon British commerce. He sailed to the West 
Indies and found rich soil, but was captured by 
the British off the Bahamas and taken to an Eng- 
lish prison. After a year as prisoner he escaped, 
aided by the jailer's wife, made his way to 
France, where he secured aid of Benjamin 
Franklin and went home to Virginia. 

In 1779 Floyd with his wife, Jane Buchanan, 
a niece of his friend. Col. Preston, started for 
Kentucky, making their way to the Falls of Ohio, 
accompanied or followed by several of his 
brothers and sisters. He built Floyd's Station, 
which stood on lands about a mile from St. 
Matthews. Unfortunately for Floyd and his 
family, their year at the Falls was one of pitiless 
cold, always spoken of in history as the "hard 
winter.'* 



157 



Louisville's First Families 

In a letter to Preston, Floyd tells of the 
weather being "violently hard," of there being 
no arrivals or news down the river in some 
weeks. He congratulates Col. and Mrs. Preston 
on the arrival of their sixth daughter. (Letitia 
Preston was the bride of John Floyd, Jr., who 
became Governor of Virginia.) Floyd con- 
tinues: "I can't buy a bushel of corn for $50, 
and everything else seems nearly in proportion. 
Jenny and myself often lament the want of our 
fine crop of corn the valley of Arcadia, and we 
both seem to have a fondness yet for that coun- 
try notwithstanding all the advantages we expect 
in future. We sometimes laugh at our misfortune 
with hopes of doing better in a few months, 
which will soon pass away.** In January, Floyd 
writes again to Col. Preston of the extremity of 
the settlers at the Falls. "If anybody comes by 
water I wish we could get a little flour brought 
down if it was as dear as gold dust. Since I wrote, 
corn has been sold at the Falls for $ 1 65 a bushel. 
I have sent $600 by Mr. Randolph, a friend of 
mine, which is for my brother Charles, to pur- 
chase some cattle and drive out next spring. We 
have no prospect of getting any linen. Jenny 
sends her best wishes and desires to know if it 
will be possible for Charles to get anything to 
clothe her and the little boy.** Later, May 31: 
"Do order Charles to bring the net profits of the 



158 



Floyd 

crop in Arcadia in clothing or we shall be obhged 
to use fig leaves. The Indians plan to make this 
neighborhood the seat of war this season. Two 
men bring accounts that six hundred English with 
united enemy Indians are now preparing to march 
against the Falls with artillery. Hardly one week 
passes without someone being scalped between 
this and the Falls, and I have almost got too 
cowardly to travel about the woods without com- 
pany." 

In this year of 1 780, Floyd was appointed one 
of the original trustees of the new city, Louis- 
ville, and it is generally supposed that he was 
also a justice of the peace. His correspondence 
with Col. Preston during the summer shows the 
pioneer life as arduous and full of anxiety. In 
June he writes: "People this year seem gen- 
erally to have lost their health, but perhaps it is 
owing to the disagreeable way in which we are 
obliged to live, crowded in forts, where the air 
seems to have lost all its purity and sweetness. 
Our little boy has been exceedingly ill." A post- 
script to the letter: "Uncle Davis and his son 
killed near Cumberland Mountains five weeks 
ago going into settlement. There were four 
brothers, all of whom have been murdered in 
seven or eight years. I hear nothing of Charles, 
and fear if he comes with a small company he 
will share the fate his uncle and son has done." 



159 



Louisville's First Families 

In the following year Floyd assumes heavy 
responsibilities, for in 1781 Gen. Clark wrote 
Gov. Jefferson, of Virginia, asking him to ap- 
point Col. John Floyd to the position of county 
lieutenant, describing Floyd as "a gentleman who 
would do honor to the position and known to 
be the most capable in the county, a soldier, a 
gentleman, and a scholar, whom the inhabitants, 
for his actions, have the greatest confidence in." 
Floyd was appointed county lieutenant and his 
letters from this time until his death, to Preston 
and to Clark, deal with the defense of the fort 
at the foot of Twelfth street, at Fort Nelson, of 
militia without ammunition and with horses lost, 
of the defenseless position of the stations. He 
writes that the reason that the country is not de- 
serted is due to the fact that the Ohio runs only 
one w^ay, and that the miserable inhabitants have 
lost their horses, that the Indians are continually 
pecking at the settlers, forty-seven inhabitants 
killed or captured from January to May. In 
September, Col. Floyd writes Gen. Clark that 
his company of twenty-seven had been dispersed 
and cut to pieces, only nine men coming off the 
field. "A party was defeated yesterday at the 
same place and many women and children 
wounded. I want satisfaction; do send me one 
hundred men, which number with what I can 



160 



Floyd 

raise, will do. Militia has no good powder, do 
send some. 1 can't write — guess at rest.'* 

Col. Floyd appeals to Gen. Clark in May, 
1 782, in behalf of the inhabitants of Spring Sta- 
tion, who had become so alarmed that they fear- 
ed to plant their corn without a small guard. 
They offer their services for work on Ft. Nelson 
in exchange for a guard of Gen. Clarke's troops 
for a week's planting. In the same letter he tells 
of planning to search houses for hemp needed 
in equipping boats on the river to be employed 
in fighting the savages, and writes Clark that he 
and his men have been making rope from **pop- 
paw bark." An earlier letter to Gen. Clark told 
of preparing canoes ordered by the government, 
and stated that he, Floyd, was liable for the 
price of most of them, about four thousand 
pounds. He writes: "People have been so long 
amused with promises of paying off indebtedness 
long incurred that the credit of the State is very 
little better here than in Illinois." It is understood 
that Floyd and the other pioneers of means were 
never remunerated for many of their expendi- 
tures of this nature, and practically ruined them- 
selves, giving funds, service, their all, to save 
Kentucky. 

A letter to Col. Preston, in March, I 783, in- 
forms him of the death of Billy Buchanan, Mrs. 
Floyd's brother, at the hands of the Indians. In 



161 



Louisville's First Families 

this letter Floyd observes that he expected some- 
thing like this to be his own lot. Within a month 
his apprehension proved true, for on April 1 0, 
while riding to the salt works from his station 
on Beargrass, Col. Floyd was fired upon by In- 
dians and received a mortal wound. In com- 
pany with him was a brother, whose horse was 
shot from under him, and a third person, who 
was killed outright. Col. Floyd was carried by 
his brother to the salt works, where he died two 
days later. On April 24 a son was born to Mrs. 
Floyd, named John, for his father. This John 
Floyd went back to Virginia to become Gover- 
nor of the State in 1830, and he was the father 
of John Buchanan Floyd, elected Governor of 
Virginia in 1850, and the Secretary of War in 
185 7 under President Buchanan. 

Col. Floyd left two other sons besides his post- 
humous child, William Preston Floyd, who took 
up his residence in Virginia, and Capt. George 
Rogers Clark Floyd, who remained in Louisville 
to become an Indian fighter like his father. 

Floyd county, Floyd's Fork, Floyd street, in 
this city, are all named for the distinguished 
gentleman, John Floyd. A drinking fountain on 
Main street between Third and Fourth was pre- 
sented to the city, several years ago, by Allen R. 
Carter through the Sons of the Revolution, as a 
marker for Floyd's old blockhouse, which stood 



162 



Floyd 

between Main and the River and Third and 
Fourth; a monument stands at Eastwood, on the 
Shelbyville pike, erected a number of years ago 
to Col. Floyd and his men. 

(Copies of Co!. John Floyd's letter preserved 
in the Draper manuscripts and in the Virginia 
archives are in the library of Mr. Temple 
Bodley.) 



163 




CAPTAIN THOMAS FLOYD SMITH 

From a portrait painted when he was a young man and in 
his uniform of Lieutenant, Eighth Infantry, U. S. A., hanging 
in the home of his son, Thomas Floyd Smith, at Glenview. 



The Floyd Family. II. 

WHEN Col. John Floyd came out from 
Virginia in 1779 to take up his resi- 
dence near Falls of Ohio, it is said a 
number of his brothers and sisters journeyed with 
him or followed him. His correspondence with 
Col. William Preston, the surveyor of Fincastle 
countj'^, his lifelong friend and an uncle of his 
second wife, Jane Buchanan, deals repeatedly 
with the coming of a brother, Charles Floyd, who 
was with Col. Floyd at the time of his death. 

The parents of the pioneers. Col. William 
Floyd and his wife, Abediah (or Abigail) Davis, 
were of Welsh descent, and the family tradition 
that there is a strain of Indian blood in the 
Davis family is sustained by old photographs of 
various descendants, while high cheek bones and 
blue black hair are noticeable in some genera- 
tion of each branch of the Floyd connection. 

Abediah Davis Floyd, through her father, 
Robert Davis, who acquired vast properties in 
Amherst county, Virginia, trading with the 
Catawba Indians, according to the tradition, was 
a lineal descendant of Opechancanough, brother 
of Powhatan, Princess Nicketti, the chieftain's 
daughter, marrying Nathaniel Davis, of Wales. 



167 



Louisville's First Families 

Col. William Floyd had one brother, Charles 
Floyd, who settled in Georgia, the forebear of 
Major Gen. John Floyd, of Georgia, who was the 
grandfather of William McAdoo, former Secre- 
tary of the Treasury. 

Col. John Floyd married in his early manhood 
a Miss Burwell, of Virginia, who had one 
daughter. Mourning Floyd, and died shortly after 
the birth of her child. Mourning Floyd mar- 
ried Col. John Stewart, of Georgia. Ten years 
after the death of his first wife Col. Floyd mar- 
ried Jane Buchanan, a kinswoman of James 
Patton, the Louisville settler, according to some 
accounts. 

Three sons were bom to John and Jane 
Floyd, William Preston Floyd, George Rogers 
Clark Floyd and John Floyd, who was a 
posthumous child, born twelve days after 
his father's death. George Rogers Clark 
Floyd, who was the only one of the three to 
remain in Louisville, the other brothers going to 
Virginia, was an Indian fighter. His rank in 
the army is sometimes given as captain and 
sometimes as major, but it is known that he 
commanded a regiment at the battle of Tippe- 
canoe. He was twice married, his first wife be- 
ing Maria Maupin. Their only son, John Floyd, 
went to Iowa to locate. 



168 



Floyd 

Major Floyd's home was near Cherokee Park, 
where he died in 1821. His declining health 
was due to the rigors of the campaign against 
Tecumseh at Fort Harrison. 

Major Floyd's second wife, to whom he was 
married in 1810, was Sarah Fontaine, one of 
the nine daughters of Capt. Aaron Fontaine. 

They had two daughters, Jane and Evelyn 
Floyd, and the former has a grandson, living in 
Louisville. Clark Penn, the son of Col. George 
Floyd Penn, of New Albany, the only known de- 
scendant of the illustrious John Floyd, known to 
make his home here. 

John Floyd, who went back to Virginia, mar- 
ried his cousin, Letitia Preston. He studied 
medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and 
practiced his profession for a time. Dr. Floyd 
was elected Governor of Virginia in 182B. His 
son, John Buchanan Floyd, was Governor of 
Virginia in 1850, was Secretary of War under 
Buchanan in 185 7, and was a General in the 
Confederate Army. The first Gov. Floyd had 
a daughter, Nicketti, who married John W. 
Johnston, United States Senator from Virginia, 
and she was the mother of Dr. George Ben 
Johnston, of Richmond, Va., whose daughters, 
Nicketti and Helen Johnston, often visit here at 
the home of Mr. and Mrs. Temple Bodley. 



169 



Louisville's First Families 

Charles Floyd married Mary Stewart in 1773 
in the Hanover Parish church. Their children 
were pioneer settlers in Indiana. One son was 
Judge Davis Floyd, prominent in the territorial 
history of Indiana, while another was Sergt. 
Charles Floj^d, of the Lewis and Clark Expedi- 
tion, who died on the trip to the coast and was 
buried at Sioux City, la., where a handsome 
marble shaft marks his grave. This monument 
was erected by the Floyd Memorial Association, 
the government contributing $20,000 toward the 
monument and grounds, known as Floyd Park, 
commemorating Sergt. Floyd and the Lewis and 
Clark Expedition. 

Isham Floyd, another of the brothers, was 
killed by the Indians on the Ohio river in 1 787. 

Nathaniel Floyd, the youngest brother, who 
married Mollie Thomas in Louisville in 1 793, 
v^^as a soldier in Thomas Joyes' regiment at the 
battle of New Orleans. After the war Floyd, 
with several companions, walked through to their 
homes. He had a farm in the neighborhood of 
Anchorage, but was living in Louisville at the 
time of his death in 1840. Two of his daughters 
have descendants here. Abediah Davis Floyd 
married Richard Meriwether, and after his death 
Henry Weaver, of Cincinnati, O. A daughter, 
Susan Floyd Weaver, married Ernest Gunter, 
the well-known musician. Mrs. Gunter was 



170 



Floyd 

much interested in the Floyd genealogy and was 
a member of the Floyd Memorial Association. 
She furnished an old letter used in establishing 
Sergt. Charles Floyd's connection with the Lou- 
isville family, a letter written by one of his 
brothers, Nathaniel Floyd, to his sister, Nancy, 
telling of Sergt. Floyd's death. This Nancy 
Floyd married George Rogers and had a 
daughter, Nancy, who married Judge Wesley 
Phelps, of Bullitt county. It is believed that the 
remains of Col. John Floyd repose on the Phelps 
farm, on the banks of Floyd's Fork, just north 
of the public road leading from Shepherdsville 
to Mt Washington, and about one mile from 
the former place. 

A daughter of Susan Floyd Gunter is Carrie 
Gunter, who lives in Ivanhoe Court. Ernest 
Gunter, her brother, makes his home in Kansas 
City, a civil engineer. 

Ann Eliza Floyd, who married George W. 
Bowling, is the ancestress of Louisville people. 
Her son, J. W. Bowling, was the father of Pearl 
Bowling (Mrs. Clay McCandless), and of 
Blanche Bowling. Mrs. Emma Garvin Harlow^, 
whose mother was Mary Bowling, is the mother 
of Edna and Nora Harlow and Floyd Preston 
Harlow. 

Elizabeth Floyd, an elder sister of CoL John 
Flcyd, married in Virginia, Charles Tuley, of a 



171 



Louisville's First Families 

prominent family of Farquier county. The 
Tuleys decided to make their way to the new 
settlement and arrived in Louisville in Sep- 
tember, 1 783. The Tuley family found the other 
side of the Ohio to their liking, and the family 
was one of the most prominent and influential 
in New Albany. The oldest son, William Floyd 
Tuley, married Jane Bell, daughter of William 
Bell, of Louisville, having a son, John Wesley 
Tuley, who married Phoebe Woodruff, 
daughter of Judge Seth Woodruff, of New 
Albany. Their son, Enos Seth Tuley, came to 
Louisville to locate in 1857, and was postmaster 
of Louisville. He married Mary Eliza Speed, of 
the pioneer Speed family, and their children in 
Louisville are Philip Tuley, Dr. Henry Enos Tuley 
and Thomas Speed Tuley. 

Another descendant of the Floyds through 
the Tuley line is Rose Tuley, who married 
Charles Earl Currie, of Louisville. Her brothers 
are Lawrence and Walter Tuley of New 
Albany. 

One sister, Abigail Davis Floyd, married in 
Fincastle, Va., Thomas Smith, a Virginian, who 
was killed by the Indians in 1 786 at the storm- 
ing of Brashear*s Fort, near Beargrass creek. 
Their son was Major Thomas Floyd Smith, bom 
in 1 784. He was ensign of rifles in 1813 after 
serving as a second lieutenant in 1812, but he 



172 



Floyd 

particularly distinguished himself in the Indian 
wars. He was adjutant to Gen. E. P. Gaines 
and led the storming party in attack at Ft. Erie. 
He was breveted major and retired from the 
army in 1837, living in St. Louis, where he died 
in 1843. 

Major Smith married Emilie Chouteau, a 
Creole, and one of the daughters of Col. Auguste 
Chouteau, surveyor of Louisiana, who as a youth 
of 14, landed at the site of the present city of 
St. Louis, in charge of the first party of colonists. 
Col. Chouteau, who superintended the building 
of the first house in St. Louis, owned an enormous 
tract of land in the heart of the city at his death, 
part of which was presented to St. Louis as a 
park by his grandson, Capt. Thomas Floyd 
Smith. 

Capt. Thomas Floyd Smith, bom in 1832 at 
a Little Rock army post, was appointed a 
lieutenant in the Eighth Regiment, United States 
Infantry, in 1855, but resigned in 1858. He 
was captain of Washington Guards in St. Louis 
and served under Gen. Frost in the campaign 
against Kansans in 1861. His home was at 
Pewee Valley, and his wife was Blanche 
Weissinger, a descendant of the Bullitts, and his 
children, who live in Louisville, are Mayor 
George Weissinger Smith, who married Nell 
Hunt; Thomas Floyd Smith, president of the 



173 



Louisville's First Families 

Board of Trade, whose wife was Mary Bruce 
before their marriage; Amanthus Smith Jung- 
bluth and Nannie Smith, Mrs. Frank Carpenter. 

Capt. Smith's brother, Louis Chouteau Smith, 
of St. Louis, married his cousin, Mary Bullitt, 
daughter of Alfred and Minerva Beckwith Bul- 
litt. Minerva Beckwith Bullitt was the daughter 
of John W. Beckwith, of Shepherdsville, and 
Mary Floyd Smith, the sister of Major Thomas 
Floyd Smith. 

Capt. Smith's sister, Philomena Smith, mar- 
ried Col. Charles P. Larned, U. S. A. 

In the possession of Thomas Floyd Smith are 
a number of papers which belonged to his grand- 
father. Major Smith. One of these is a letter 
written October 11, 1839, by Gen. Edward 
Pendleton Gaines, to Major and Mrs. Smith, 
"respectfully requesting them to accept a portrait 
of Edward Pendleton Gaines as a slender token 
of friendship and in remembrance of unceasing 
admiration, cherished for twenty-five years, of 
repeated acts of gallantry by which the then 
Lieut. Smith, of the First Rifle Regiment, signal- 
ized himself and did honor to his corps and his 
country's service in the defense of Ft. Erie — 
surpassed by none in the heroic enterprise, dis- 
playing the untiring chivalry of a true-hearted 
patriot." 



174 



Floyd 

Another letter, beginning "Dear Capt.,'* was 
written by Gen. Zachary Taylor at Louisville on 
January 4, 1824, to Major Smith, dealing with 
Indian wars, with the political situation and of 
Major Smith being detailed to command a ren- 
dezvous to be established at St. Louis or Belle 
Fontaine. 

The Floyd monument in Shelbyville, which 
is a fine white marble shaft, bears this inscrip- 
tion. * 'Erected by the Commonwealth of Ken- 
tucky in Memory of Fourteen Brave Soldiers who 
Fell Under Capt. John Floyd in a Contest With 
the Indians in 1 783." 

Although Col. John Floyd was killed April 12, 
1 783, his will was not probated imtil 1 794, 
owing to the delay in having survey made of his 
lands — from the Virginia government. He gave 
all his lands on the north side of Beargrass to his 
wife. To his son, Willian Preston Floyd, he 
gave 2,000 acres on the south side of the creek; 
to his son, G. R. C. Floyd, a tract of 4,000 
acres in Fayette county, and to his unborn son 
(Gov. John Floyd) he left 1,400 acres on 
Harrod's creek, ordering the property to be held 
until the children were of age, and a division of 
his slaves to be made. 

To his brother, Isham, he left 200 acres of 
Floyd's Fork, and to his brothers, Charles and 
Robert, 400 acres in any part of his lands they 



175 



Louisville's First Families 

might select on the condition that they com- 
plete his surveys and secure patents on all his 
lands, and with this an equitable division of 
surveying fees. 




:h6 STANDARD PRINTING CD. 



176 



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